OrestesANCIENT_EuripidesVanHove

OrestesANCIENT_EuripidesVanHove

OGCMA s.v. "Orestes"
comedie-francaise.fr
Euripides, Orestes, passim
Euripides, Electra, passim

Ivo van Hove, director, Electre/Oreste adaptation into one production of Euripides’ two plays. Comédie-Française, Paris, May thru July 2019; broadcast over Pathé to cinemas worldwide on 23 May 2019.

From 2 may 2019 The New York Times Theater section: By Laura Cappelle "Forget ‘Game of Thrones.’ No One Does Violence Like Euripides. — Two productions in Paris with their roots in the Greek playwright’s works explore the nature of human brutality. But without any CGI effects." https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/02/..."

In the image at left Orestes and Electra contemplate their mother’s bloody corpse with Electra’s Nurse as the Chorus prepares to weigh in. The reviewer reports that Van Hove’s production foregoes the deus ex machina Euripides included in the Electra’s finale (the Dioscori) but plays the finale of the Orestes by the Euripidean book… to a point. Van Hove's Orestes still attempts to stab Hermione after Apollo's dramatic departure. The mutilation of Aegisthus' body might contradict the tenor of Euripides' Orestes, but the graphic details of Electra's mutilation of that corpse might exceed Athenian tragic decorum.

OGCMA slides are designed by Roger T. Macfarlane for use in Classical Civilization 241 courses at Brigham Young University.
The present resource contains information assembled for The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, 1400 – 1990’s, edited by J. Davidson Reid (Oxford 1994), and it is used with express permission from Oxford University Press.
Address concerns or inquiries to macfarlane@byu.edu.