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Sign up todayThe Oresteia - Abridged
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Learn moreThe only complete trilogy to survive from ancient Greek theater is presented here in this sound recording of all three plays: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides.
In the Oresteia, Aeschylus dramatizes the myth of the curse on the royal house of Argos. Action begins when King Agamemnon returns victorious from the Trojan War but is treacherously slain by his wife. It ends with the trial of their son, Orestes, who slew his mother to avenge her treachery—a trial with the goddess Athena as judge, the god Apollo as defense attorney, and avenging demons called The Furies as prosecutors. The results of the trial change the nature of divine and human justice forever.
As was the custom in antiquity, this trilogy was accompanied by a satyr play called Proteus, a broad farce on a related theme, namely, the encounter between Agamemnon’s brother, Menelaus, with the slippery Old Man of the Sea. This play is lost, but Blackstone has included verses from The Odyssey, which inspired it.
Aeschylus (c. 525–456 BC) was the earliest of the three great tragic playwrights of ancient Greece whose work has survived to the twenty-first century. He fought bravely in the Battle of Salamis, which inspired his first surviving play, The Persians. According to legend, he died in Sicily when an eagle dropped a tortoise on his head.
Reviews
“The greatest achievement of the human mind.”
“Although these Greek plays are twenty-five centuries old, this production is, remarkably, the first audio release to include the complete trilogy…It features a fine performance by Robertson Dean.”
“The Oresteia is perhaps the most unusual tragedy in the theater of the West and certainly one of the very greatest.”
“In their day, these poetic, highly stylized tragedies were chanted rather than acted…Thus they work particularly well in audio format. This production makes the most of modern technology to create haunting choral effects. The individual actors are all well-cast, and their performances are evenly balanced.”
“The Oresteia is not merely a magnificent work, it is one of the supreme achievements of classical culture…the Oresteia is splendid, and as a depiction of the cumulative power of evil it is unsurpassed.”
“In this terrifying masterpiece of his last years, Aeschylus passed through tragedy and out onto the other side: to a Divine Comedy of the stage.”
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