Agamemnon in Performance 458 BC to AD 2004 458 BC to Ad 2004

Aeschylus' Agamemnon, the first play in the Oresteia trilogy, is one of the most influential theatrical texts in the global canon. In performance, translation, adaptation, along with sung and danced interpretations, it has been familiar in the Greek world and the Roman empire, and from the Renaissance to the contemporary stage. It has been central to the aesthetic and intellectual avant-garde as well as to radical politics of all complexions and to feminist thinking. Contributors to this interdisciplinary collection of eighteen essays on its performance history include classical scholars, theatre historians, and experts in English and comparative literature. All Greek and Latin has been translated; the book is generously illustrated, and supplemented with the useful research aid of a chronological appendix of performances.

1 - Agamemnons in performance
2 - `Agamemnon' for the ancients
3 - `Striking too short at Greeks': the transmission of `Agamemnon' to the English Renaissance stage
4 - Clytemnestra versus her Senecan tradition
5 - Clytemnestra's ghost: the Aeschylean legacy in Gluck's Iphigenia operas
6 - `Agamemnon''s influence in Germany: Goethe, Schiller, and Wagner
7 - Agamemnon: speaking the unspeakable
8 - Viewing `Agamemnon' in 19th-century Britain
9 - OTOTOTOI: Virginia Woolf and `the naked cry' of Cassandra
10 - Translation or transubstantiation
11 - Staging `Agamemnon': the languages of translation
12 - Pasolini's `Agamemnon': translation, screen version, performance
13 - The Harrison version: `so long ago that it's become a song?'
14 - `Agamemnon' in Russia
15 - Ariane Mnouchkine and the history of the French `Agamemnon'
16 - The chorus of Aeschylus' `Agamemnon' in modern stage productions: towards the `performative turn'
17 - The Millennium Project: `Agamemnon' in the United States
18 - Cassandra: the prophet unveiled
19 - `Agamemnons' on the database

Fiona Macintosh is Senior Research Fellow at the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama, University of Oxford. Pantelis Michelakis is Lecturer in Classics, University of Bristol, and Honorary Fellow, Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama, University of Oxford. Edith Hall is Leverhulme Professor of Greek Cultural History at the University of Durham, and Co-Director of the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama, University of Oxford. Oliver Taplin is Professor of Classical Languages and Literature at the University of Oxford, and Fellow of the British Academy.