Music

Anaïs Mitchell is creating her own mythology

Laura Snapes | Saturday 15 May, 2010 15:52

“There are only so many stories in the world,” says Anaïs Mitchell of Hadestown, her folk opera about Orpheus and Eurydice. “Artists tap into echoes that have been reverberating in the rabbit hole of human existence since before we can remember. We think we’re coming up with this shit from scratch, but it’s not true!”

Mitchell has indirectly written her own folk story within the tale she set out to tell, in which the creation of an ambitious project spawned a heartening yarn of community-tended grassroots. Cut off from the rest of the country by the weather and a lack of television, the Vermont street where the record took shape is one of allotments, chickens and mucking in with community projects.

“I don’t know if a thing like Hadestown could have gotten off the ground someplace else. In Vermont, it was pretty natural – friends and neighbours coming together to help each other out and make fun. ‘There’s a pile of wood in your driveway? I’ll help you stack it,’ leads to, ‘You want to write an opera? Sure, I’ll be Hades!’”

There was no intention to write an opera. “I have no experience in it, none!” she admits. “But I’m a big fan of The Threepenny Opera and other Brecht and Weil stuff.” Their play Mother Courage is a palpable influence on the record – ‘Why We Build The Wall’ and ‘When The Chips Are Down’ force the listener to question how they’d act from a privileged position in times of social disaster. However, unlike the way in which Brecht defamiliarised the atrocities of Nazism by setting them in an arcane war, Mitchell brings the Greek myth into a truly American situation and sound that invites timely empathy – an apocalyptic post-Depression New Orleans alive with roots, folk and blues (though she wrote the record before the economic downturn took hold).

But political allegory isn’t her top priority. “It’s more important to me that people feel the story in an emotional way than that they think about it intellectually,” she admits. “I’ve always loved storytelling, so I jumped at the chance to work on a longer, more cathartic thing than just a three minute song.”

The myth emerged from personal affinities that she felt with Eurydice’s story – “love, loss of love, regrets and doubts” – around which the main supporting characters of Orpheus, Persephone and Hades took shape. After a ramshackle tour made up of neighbours and key collaborators Michael Chorney and Ben Matchstick, the songs were still in flux. So they decided to finish the record properly before getting back on the road, and headed into the studio. As the opera grew in scope, so did Mitchell’s list of fantasy collaborators, most of which were realised. Ani DiFranco, who signed Anaïs to her label Righteous Babe, agreed to be Persephone, a role she embraces with sagacity and sauciness. Greg Brown, who Mitchell describes as an “unbridled poetic sex machine”, came next as the gravel-throated Hades, followed by a certain Wisconsin log cabin-dweller.

“Justin [Vernon] and his manager reached out of the blue and asked if I wanted to open Bon Iver’s Europe tour. On the very first night in Newcastle, I heard him sing ‘Stacks’, and my heart exploded. I thought, ‘He has to be Orpheus.’”

A few glasses of Dutch courage later on a ferry ride from Scotland to Norway, Mitchell popped the question, and Vernon said yes. It’s arguable that his involvement drew many to listen to the record who might otherwise have ignored it as an obscure fancy, though as the glowing critical reception has shown, there’s a hell of a lot more to Hadestown than glitzy collaborators. A limited amount of stories there may be, but Anaïs Mitchell has proven her voice and vision to be truly singular.

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