The Oresteia in the arts and popular culture

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[edit] Opera, ballet and incidental music

  • Several composers have written musical treatments of all or part of Aeschylus' trilogy. From the late 19th century comes Sergey Taneyev's full-length opera Oresteia. In the 20th century Soviet composer Yury Alexandrovich Falik composed a one-act ballet Oresteia; Darius Milhaud supplied incidental music for the plays, the Vienese composer Ernst Krenek wrote Leben des Orest (1929), and Iannis Xenakis wrote at least three works for voices and instruments based the trilogy. There is also the one-act opera Il furore di Oreste by Flavio Testi (from Libation-Bearers) and "Prologue", by Harrison Birtwistle (from Agamemnon), for tenor and chamber ensemble.

[edit] Cinema

  • The Italian poet and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini planned to make a version of the trilogy, set in an unnamed African colony. His goal was to use the Oresteia to comment on the emergence of democracy in Africa; however, during a research expedition captured in the documentary Notes for an African Orestes (1975), a group of African students objected to the project on the grounds that an ancient European text would have little to say about modern African history and that Pasolini was treating Africa as a single entity and not as a continent of diverse, complex cultures. Pasolini abandoned the project.
  • A version of Oresteia, set in modern Greece, is presented in 1975 film The Travelling Players by Theo Angelopoulos.

[edit] Stage works

  • Irish playwright Marina Carr loosely borrows the plot of the first two parts of the Oresteia in her 2002 play, Ariel, which is set in the contemporary Irish midlands.
  • Obie and Oppenhiemer Award-winning Playwright/Director Robert O'Hara wrote and directed the world premiere of "Good Breeding", an adaptation of the Greek Oresteia inspired by the works of Aeschylus and Euripides. The Curse on the House of Atreus is turned upside down in this Erotic exploration of Love, Lust and Revenge. It was first performed at the University of California San Diego, UCSD, on February 16, 2007.
  • French playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre closely based his play The Flies (French: Les Mouches) on the Oresteia. He tellingly recreates the intense persecution of Orestes by the Furies, but the reactions of Orestes are transformed by Sartre's existentialist philosophy mixed with material highly suggestive of rebellion. This undoubtedly because it was written during the Nazi occupation of France.
  • American playwright Eugene O'Neill based Mourning Becomes Electra on the Oresteia. It is likewise composed of three plays, with themes corresponding to Aeschylus' trilogy. It takes place at the end of the American Civil War as opposed to the Trojan War.
  • South African theater artist Yael Farber based her piece Molora (Ashes) on the Orestia. She set its themes within the context of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings of South Africa in the demise of aparthied. Molora was originally produced at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg.
  • American Deaf Director Ethan Sinnott creates the first deaf translation of the Oresteia, Agamemnon in 2008. This play was designed specifically for deaf actors to perform for deaf audiences, but also provided captioning for hearing audience members, and is a strong visual-based storytelling of the trilogy of the Oresteia.
  • Northwestern University theater group Sit & Spin Productions produced a show in May 2008 called Memory Furies, which used video projection to combine elements from the 1959 French New Wave film Hiroshima Mon Amour with the Oresteia.

[edit] Fiction

[edit] Poetry

  • Poet Robinson Jeffers's The Tower Beyond Tragedy is a modern, verse version of the Oresteia including references to the World Wars.
  • Poet T. S. Eliot's play The Family Reunion is based on The Eumenides.
  • Poet Sylvia Plath's poem The Colossus alludes to the blue sky of the Oresteia.

[edit] Popular song