Homer’s Odyssey, probably composed around 700BC, is one of the oldest poems in the western tradition, with a concomitantly long history of translation. The first into Latin was in the third century BC by a slave called Livius Andronicus. The first into English was by George Chapman in 1614-15; there have been at least 60 others. Now comes the first by a woman. American playwright Ellen McLaughlin and director Michael Khan's The Oresteia, premiered on April 30, 2019 at the Shakespeare Theatre Company, Washington, DC. The adaptation was shown as a digital production by Theatre for a New Audience in New York City during the COVID-19 Pandemic and was directed by Andrew Watkins. [43] [44]

productions West Glamorgan Youth Theatre Company | productions

This section possibly contains original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations. Statements consisting only of original research should be removed. ( February 2021) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Bury, J. B.; Meiggs, Russell (1956). A history of Greece to the death of Alexander the Great, 3rd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp.347–348, 352.Thérèse Radic. "Agamemnon", Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed October 15, 2015), (subscription access) Orestes goes to the ceremony of the dead, where the angry souls are released by Aegisthus for one day where they are allowed out to roam the town and torment those who have wronged them. The townspeople have to welcome the souls by setting a place at their tables and welcoming them into their beds. The townspeople have seen their purpose in life as constantly mourning and being remorseful of their "sins". Electra, late to the ceremony, dances on top the cave in a white gown to symbolize her youth and innocence. She dances and yells to announce her freedom and denounce the expectation to mourn for deaths not her own. The townspeople begin to believe and think of freedom until Zeus sends a contrary sign to deter them, and to deter Orestes from confronting the present King. Zeitlin, Froma I. (1966-01-01). "Postscript to Sacrificial Imagery in the Oresteia (Ag. 1235–37)". Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association. 97: 645–653. doi: 10.2307/2936034. JSTOR 2936034. Composer Sergei Taneyev adapted the trilogy into his own operatic trilogy of the same name, which was premiered in 1895. La Tragedie d'Oreste et Electre: Album by British band Cranes which is a musical adaptation of Jean-Paul Sartre's The Flies.

Bernstein Oresteia of Aeschylus (Paperback) (US Jeffrey Scott Bernstein Oresteia of Aeschylus (Paperback) (US

Choephori, or The Libation Bearers, has a very different tone and pace to Agamemnon. As Bernstein himself comments, it feels like the middle slow movement, the adagio, of a symphony, with the other two plays carrying the driving force of the narrative. In this play, which takes place some years after the action of the first, the siblings are reunited after Orestes’ exile, and the heart of the piece is a dirge, the mournful kommos, spoken by Orestes, Electra and a Chorus who are now very evidently sympathetic to Orestes and his plight. As the son of a murdered father, it falls to him to exact vengeance, and Choephori presents a slow reveal of what Orestes has been told by Apollo’s Oracle at Delphi: Now it is time to let this version of the Oresteia speak for itself, without apologies or statements of principle (petards that will probably hoist the writing later). A translator’s best hope, I think, and still the hardest to achieve, is Dryden’s hope that his author will speak the living language of the day. And not in a way that caters to its limits, one might add, but that gives its life and fibre something of a stretching in the process. In translating Aeschylus I have also tried to suggest the responsion of his choral poetry - the paired, isometric stanzas that form the dialectic dance and singing of his plays in Greek - but I have done so flexibly. and using English rhythms. The translation has its leanings, too, yet they are loyal to Aeschylus, at least as I perceive him, and loyal to the modem grain as well. There is a kinship between the Oresteia and ourselves; a mutual need to recognize the fragility of our culture, to restore some reverence for the Great Mother and her works, and especially to embrace the Furies within ourselves, persuading them, perhaps, to invigorate our lives. I hope this kinship can be felt in the English text and supported by the introductory essay. But sounds of his death at their hands are heard from offstage, and the scene is set for the encounter between mother and son:Herbert Weir Smyth, Aeschylus, Loeb Classical Library, 2 vols. Greek text with facing translations, 1922 – prose Agamemnon Libation Bearers Eumenides The Oresteia perfects this vision of warning and reward. Athenian exhilaration still ran strong in 458 when Aeschylus, at the age of sixty-seven, produced his trilogy. It breathes the buoyant spirit of his city. Its dominant symbolism is that of light after darkness. Beginning in the darkness-before-dawn of a Mycenaean citadel benighted by curses and crimes, it ends with a triumphant torchlit procession in an Athens radiant with civic faith and justice. The entire drama is one long procession, and each step brings us closer to the light. Originally the Oresteia consisted of four plays - Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides and Proteus. The last was a satyr-play, completing the full ‘tetralogy’ dramatists composed. It would have presented gods and heroes in a comic situation that relieved the tensions of the tragedies while illuminating them with fresh perspectives. The Proteus has not survived, but the three tragedies form a unity in themselves, the only complete Greek trilogy we have, and its scope is as expansive as an epic. Aeschylus referred to his work as ‘slices from the banquet of Homer’, but his powers of assimilation were impressive. His trilogy sweeps from the Iliad to the Odyssey, from war to peace. Yet it was the darker events of the Odyssey - the murder of Agamemnon by his wife and the vengeance of his son, Orestes - that inspired Aeschylus to produce a great tale of the tribe. He deepened Homer with even older, darker legends and lifted him to a later, more enlightened stage of culture. What Athena, the goddess of wisdom, realizes in Eumenides, the final play of the trilogy, is something supposedly uttered by Mahatma Gandhi two and a half millennia later: “an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind.” Namely, even if justified, in the long run, the old law of retaliation is just too costly for the community, since any murder would naturally result in many more. Consequently, the never-ending cycle of revenge is appropriately replaced by civic justice, a newly instituted court of law whose word should be final on all matters, bringing them to an indisputable end – one that will have to be accepted not only by mortals but by gods as well. The Gender War

Oresteia of Aeschylus by Jeffrey Scott Bernstein [PDF] The Oresteia of Aeschylus by Jeffrey Scott Bernstein

I could not have done my part without the help of many people. Bedell Stanford first, of course. He offered me what I have needed most, Ionic tolerance and Doric discipline. So much patience with my questions, so many cautions to revise - he has been the brake to my locomotive, in his phrase, and the conscience of Aeschylus in mine. Before they met their deaths in June 1971, my friends Anne and Adam Parry often came to my rescue with their knowledge, comradeship and warmth. Robert Fitzgerald helped me on many points, even as late as the galleys of the first edition, with his Homeric magnanimity and tact. Kenneth Burke taught me that The Eumenides is less tragic than I had thought, and less transcendental than he would like. And the one who led me to translate the Oresteia gave me his painstaking, strenuous criticism of the opening play, its notes and introduction. He would rather not be named; I owe him more than I can say.

Oresteia, trilogy of tragic dramas by the ancient Greek dramatist Aeschylus, first performed in 458 bce. It is his last work and the only complete trilogy of Greek dramas that has survived.