a new opera-theater work
on the inner mythic landscape of grief
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About
Umbra is an opera-theater work on the inner landscape of grief—where reality, myth, memory, dream, and time collide.
Part autobiography, part myth, Umbra entwines two parallel narratives: the composer after the suicide of a close friend and Orpheus after emerging from the Underworld without Eurydice. ​
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Creative Leads
Creator & Composer: Elliot Ménard
Director & Co-Creator: Héctor Àlvarez
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Libretto
Original poetry (English) and excerpts of Ovid's Metamorphoses (Latin)
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Vocal Forces/Roles
ELLIOT/ORPHEUS (mezzo-soprano) — a young woman who experiences a traumatic loss, enters a mythic portal, and finds herself in Orpheus' body and world, as she embarks upon her journey through grief.
GREEK CHORUS (4+ SSAA ensemble) — an ever-present force that makes up Orpheus’ world: taking shape as a grove of trees, a herd of Bacchae, narrators, extensions of Orpheus, and the figures in his memory.
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The staged workshop production of Umbra at Highways Performance Space (March 2025) included 2 additional actors in the ensemble. Umbra’s cast size is flexible: it is possible to perform Umbra without the 2 actors and/or with a larger GREEK CHORUS.
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Instrumentation
Cello
Flute
Electronics​
Features: wind chimes, whirly tubes, rattle, tambourine
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Ensemble
9+ performers
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Run Time
80 minutes
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Synopsis
Elliot addresses the audience as herself. She tells the audience about her childhood best friend, Virginia—their world together and losing her to suicide in 2017. She describes how in reading Ovid’s Metamorphoses in the deepest throes of grief, the boundaries blurred between herself and Orpheus, her friend and Eurydice, dream and reality. She takes the audience with her on the descent of memory. She emerges from this katabasis as Orpheus, in her own inner mythic landscape of grief, the moment he is cast out of the Underworld, without Eurydice. Elliot fuses with Orpheus as he wanders the living world, in a mourning-silence, refusing song. He returns to song, changed, and sings stories of love and death. Through these songs, he tries again in vain to bring back Eurydice. The music draws out the Bacchae from the woods, bloodthirsty. They dismember him. Finally, in death, he reunites with Eurydice. Their eyes meet. Elliot returns to herself as Eurydice runs off in childlike joy and sees Virginia all around her.
Note from the Composer
Umbra is an adaptation of both an ancient myth and a true story: in 2017, my childhood best friend passed away by suicide. In the disorientation of her loss, Orpheus’ journey through grief became a compass for mine—I knew its feral logic, the katabasis of dreams, the way time peels off from linearity.
Umbra begins with the convergence of my story and Orpheus’—after he emerges from the Underworld without Eurydice. The libretto entwines parallel narratives of loss and transformation across realms, through excerpts of Ovid’s Metamorphoses and original contemporary English text.
Umbra exists within the inner landscape of grief, where reality, myth, memory, dream, and time collide.
A central theme explored in the production is the cyclical relationship between destruction and creation—dismemberment and re-memberment—illustrating how grief both fractures and reconstitutes us.
The music draws from a variety of vocal traditions, such as Balkan folk song, Greek polyphony, madrigals, medieval liturgical chant, and choral jazz. The compact yet high-impact instrumentation (5 singers, cello, flute, and electronics) achieves complex texture through extended techniques, electronic processing and looping, and percussive roles taken on by the ensemble.
Characters move fluidly between mythic and contemporary worlds, while the Chorus shape-shifts from narrators to Bacchae, from extensions of Orpheus to figures in his memory and the world surrounding him.
The opera’s title itself bridges worlds: between its singular (“shade”) and plural (“underworld”), “umbra” contains ghosts, traces, simulacra, shadows, and shelters. Both nurturing and haunting, “umbra” entwines life and death.
For me, the act of performing Umbra opens up the possibility of reunion with lost loved ones, through the confrontation of grief and ritual of memory.