The death of Orpheus

It used to be a go-to joke of mine to talk about how after long and harrowing adventures, into the underworld no less, Orpheus met his end being torn apart by maenads.

It just seemed like such an odd non-sequitur, and so much against the grain of our modern understanding of storytelling. Why was he ripped apart by maenads? Welp, cause maenads are f****** crazy, I guess. There’s your moral.

But learning more about the cults of Dionysus and the Orphic cults, I’m getting the sense that there’s a lot more meaning to that episode that would have been clearer to contemporary audiences than it has been to me.

Anyone have any insight on this? My understanding is limited, but it’s been presented to me that Orphism was a sort of reformed version of the Dionysian cults- is there a metaphorical reason for the way he died, in light of that?