Cultural influence of Metamorphoses

Did You Know?

• Gian Lorenzo Bernini's marble sculpture The Rape of Proserpina (1621–22) depicts the abduction from Book V.
• Bernini's Apollo and Daphne (1625) depicts the metamorphosis of the nymph Daphne from Book I.
• Pablo Picasso illustrated the Metamorphoses in 30 etchings published in 1931 as Les Métamorphoses.

Plays

The myth of Pygmalion and Galatea from Book X was adapted into plays by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in 1762, W. S. Gilbert in 1871, and George Bernard Shaw in 1913. Shaw's play, about a phonetics professor who trains a Cockney flower girl to pass for a duchess, was adapted into a 1938 film and later into the musical My Fair Lady in 1956, which became a 1964 musical film. The 1990 film Pretty Woman also draws on this story. In 2002, Mary Zimmerman adapted Ovid's myths into a play of the same title, and London Bubble adapted it in 2006. Naomi Iizuka's Polaroid Stories uses the format of Metamorphoses with modern, drug-addicted teenage characters. The Yvonne Arnaud Theatre presented a new adaptation at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2010.

Literature

In 1613, Spanish poet Luis de Góngora wrote La Fábula de Polifemo y Galatea retelling the story from Book XIII. Christoph Ransmayr reworked characters from Metamorphoses in his 1988 novel The Last World. British poet laureate Ted Hughes adapted twenty-four stories into his 1997 poetry volume Tales from Ovid, later staged in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1999. Phillip Terry edited Ovid Metamorphosed in 2000, a collection of modern adaptations with contributors including Margaret Atwood. Adrian Mitchell's Shapeshifters: Tales from Ovid's Metamorphoses, for young adults, was published posthumously in 2009. Ursula Dubosarsky adapted ten stories into plays for children, first published in the School Magazine from 2006. Richard Powers' 2018 novel The Overstory makes frequent allusion to Metamorphoses.

Paintings

Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne (1522–23) depicts the story from Book VIII. Later, Titian painted a series of large mythological paintings known as the poesie for Philip II of Spain, including Venus and Adonis, Danaë, Diana and Actaeon, Diana and Callisto, Perseus and Andromeda, The Rape of Europa, and The Death of Actaeon. His last finished work, The Flaying of Marsyas (c. 1570–1576), depicts the punishment of Marsyas from Book VI. Diego Velázquez's Las Hilanderas (1650s) is influenced by the story of Arachne from Book VI. Gustave Moreau's Jupiter and Semele (1894–95) depicts the myth from Book III. John William Waterhouse's Echo and Narcissus (1903) depicts the myth from Book III.

Music

Handel's masque Acis and Galatea (1718/1732) and Lully's 1686 opera Acis et Galatée are based on characters from Metamorphoses. Handel also composed Semele in 1743, based on the episode from Book III. Jean-Marie Leclair wrote the opera Scylla et Glaucus in 1746, based on Books 10, 13, and 14. Eleven-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his first opera, Apollo et Hyacinthus, in 1767, based on the myth from Book X. Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf wrote twelve symphonies on selected stories in 1783, of which six survive. Benjamin Britten's Six Metamorphoses after Ovid for solo oboe (1951) incorporates six mythical characters. Patricia Barber's 2006 album Mythologies is a set of songs based on Metamorphoses.