Classical plays at the Greek Theatre in Syracuse

Euripides’ Bacchae and Iphigenia in Tauris and Aristophanes’ comedy The Clouds are the texts chosen for the 56th season of the 2020 Greek Festival of Syracuse in Sicily.
In all three you can find hidden truths, the theme of the 2020 season, scenes and characters that present themselves in an opposite way to what they really are.

 

Starting from the last tragedy of Euripides, The Bacchae, a mosaic impossible to compose, where every truth overshadows its opposite, in Iphigenia in Tauris, where every reality believed is false, to The Clouds, where every faith in certain solutions or certain “new culture”, proves to be illusory.

Image credit INDA Fondazione Siracusa
Image credit INDA Fondazione Siracusa

Iphigenia in Tauris

Iphigenia in Tauris will be staged at the Greek Theatre in Syracuse for the third time after the editions of 1933 and 1980. The text of Euripides represented for the first time probably between 414 and 412 BC, tells how, thanks to the intervention of Artemis, Iphigenia was saved during the sacrifice made by her father, Agamemnon. Transferred to Tauris and become priestess at the temple of Artemis, she will meet her brother Oreste, tormented by the Erinyes after the matricide, without recognizing him.

 

Agnition’s mockery against the local king, Toante, and happy escape by sea close this tragedy with a happy ending, like Elena and Ione, a unique case in the complex and articulated history of the Euripidean dramaturgy.

May 09/13/15/17/19/21/23/27/29/31

June 02/07/11/14/16/19/24/28

July 02

Greek Theatre Syracuse
Greek Theatre Syracuse

The Bacchae

Seventh representation for The Bacchae. The tragedy, written by Euripides in 405 BC and represented posthumously, narrates the arrival in Thebes of the god Dionysus, who took human form to punish the Theban women who doubted his divine birth.

 

Only the king Pentheus seems determined to oppose the god-inspired madness. When women go to Monte Citerone to celebrate the Dionysian Mysteries, Pentheus lets himself be persuaded by the god, disguised as a woman, to follow him on the mountain. Agave, Penteo’s mother, and the bacchanties in the throes of the Dionysian delusion mistake him for a lion and tear him to pieces.

 

When Agave comes to herself, she recognizes with horror the head of her son in the trophy believed the head of a lion. The revenge of the god is accomplished.

May 08/10/12/14/16/20/22/24/26/28/30

June 03/06/10/13/18/21/23/26

July 01/04

The Clouds

The Clouds of Aristophanes will be staged at the Greek Theater in Syracuse for the fourth time. The Clouds was represented for the first time in Athens, at the Great Dionysia of 423 BC and tells of the farmer Strepsiade, persecuted by creditors, who decides to send his son Phidippides to the school of Socrates where he can learn how to prevail in dialectical clashes. In the face of his son’s reticence, it will be Strepsiade himself who will go to the philosopher’s school of thought, where, however, he will not understand anything of what he is taught.

 

His son Phidippides, intrigued by his father’s stories, will decide to follow the teachings of Socrates, in search of the best way to prevail in verbal duels, up to witness the debate between the Just Speech at the Unjust Speech, and finally to beat his father, proving it to have the right to do so and pushing Strepsiade himself to set fire to Socrates’ school.

June 05/09/12/17/20/25/27/30

July 03/05

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