Orpheus and Eurydice

Peter Elfelt, 1906, 3 min
Dance from the 1762 Italian opera 'Orfeo ed Euridice' by Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787); choreography by Hans Beck, 1896. Performed by Valborg Guldbrandsen (later Borchsenius), Ellen Price, Elisabeth Beck (1865-1946), and Anna Marie Agerholm (1875-1929).

Royal court photographer Peter Elfelt (1866-1931) was Denmark's first filmmaker. He made his first recording in early 1897, the one-minute reel 'Driving With Greenland Dogs', and the following ten years he documented every important national event as well as daily life in Denmark. He also made commercial shorts and the first Danish fiction film, The Execution (1903).