Ten years of war, the Choir of Elders gathers
in front of the palace to demonstrate the discontentment and anxiety that rages
in Argos. Whatever the outcome in Troy it will not bring good omens. The city
is being badly governed, in the hands of corrupts and malefactors, as stated by
the Vigia (watchman) in his suffering testimony.
1. The Agamemnon
Victory announced, Agamemnon returns home “triumphant”, with great wealth and slaves. He’s received by the Choir in silence and redoubled anguish; awaits him Clytemnestra, the adulteress that weaving a web, makes public praises and leads him to walk on a purple carpet, worthy of the gods. Cassandra, king Priam’s daughter, now captive, possessed by the ex-lover Apollo curse refuses to enter the palace and announces to the City the smell of blood that those walls exhale, product of former and forthcoming crimes perpetrated there. Fear increases, rumors thicken, and a wish of a collective death emerges as the soothing solution for anguish. At last she enters determined, that her death serves as testimony for future memory and that it’s avenged. Master and slave are barbarously murdered by the queen and her lover Aegisthus. The purposes were fulfilled and enjoy “the lovely daylight carrier of Justice!”. The bodies are exposed. The Choir before such disgrace manifests the desire for revenge and places hope in Orestes, son of Agamemnon, exiled.
2. The Choephori
Ten years later, in a crime of terror, Orestes
returns to Argos, as a foreigner hoping to avenge the horrible death of his
father. Undercover he visits his father interdict and abandoned tomb and, by
chance, that only gods can explain, finds there a group of trojan slaves that
his father gave to Clytemnestra and among them, in great suffering, is Electa
his sister, made slave by her own mother. With the support of his sister and the
Choir of Trojan, plans the death of his mother and her lover Aegisthus. Apollo
the god is with him, and they agree the revenge. Orestes and his friend
Pylades, present themselves to the gates of the palace as foreigners looking
for hospitality; they bring news of the death of Orestes. They enter the palace
and the brothers avenge the death of their father. Two bodies are now exposed,
the “two homeland tyrants, killers of my father and destroyers of this home”,
says Orestes, that after the matricide, tormented by remorse, with vindictive
Erinyes of his mother that stoke him, runs like a mad man.
3. The Eumenides
Chased by Erinyes, exhausted, bloody and trustless, Orestes goes to Delphi to Apollo’s temple, questioning his capacity to carry out the agreement with the god. Apollo quiets him and forces him to fulfill the agreement and, as prove of his power, puts Erinyes asleep, giving him time to continue his journey to Athens, where he should beseech the patronage of the goddess Athena. The spectrum of Clytemnestra comes to fustigate the sleeping Erinyes, demanding revenge against her son. In Athens a new court is formed, the trial of Clymenestra and Orestes case, represented in court by gods, is curiously made by men, selected and chaired by a new goddess (Athena). Being part of the process the ancient (Erinyes) and new gods (Apollo and Athena), the result is a draw. In such cases the law ordered in favor of the defendant. Orestes is therefore acquitted and the Erinyes once tamed, are transformed into benevolent goddess (Eumenes).
Rui Madeira
