Thunder only happens when it’s raining.
—STEVIE NICKS
Not my idea to do this. It was the inspiration of the artistic director of the Classic Stage Company in New York City, Brian Kulick. Let me say how it came about.
I translated Sophokles’ Elektra in 1987 and Euripides’ Orestes in 2006 for different reasons: Elektra was commissioned by Oxford University Press for a series called The Greek Tragedies in New Translations; Orestes was presented as a staged reading at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. To translate Aiskhylos’ Agamemnon had never crossed my mind. But in 2007 Brian Kulick approached me with the notion of trying my hand at Agamemnon and putting together an Oresteia that combined the three playwrights, which he would then undertake to produce. I said, “Who needs this?”—meaning, Aiskhylos has already given us an
Oresteia richer than rubies, of which lots of good translations exist. Why monkey around with it? But Kulick persisted in thinking it a good idea to make a non-foundational Oresteia. He spoke and wrote to me about this on several occasions. As I understand it, the project interested him first of all historically. To hear the same legend (the story of the house of Atreus) told by three different playwrights at three different vantage points of Athenian history would offer “a unique perspective on the Athenian moment,” he said. Kulick saw a trajectory “from myth to mockery” in the three treatments.
In Aiskhylos’ hands the story of the house of Atreus is designed to end in a valedictory celebration of Athenian democracy and its newborn sense of justice; when Sophokles takes over the tale it becomes more complex and contradictory; with Euripides the design is completely turned on its head. We follow a trajectory from myth to mockery. What happened to effect this? History happened. Aiskhylos composed his Oresteia shortly after Athens’ victory at the battle of Marathon, which marked the height of Athenian military and cultural supremacy; Euripides finished his Orestes almost a hundred years later as Athens headed for ruin, due to her protracted involvement in the Peloponnesian War … The house of Atreus, for these tragedians, was a way of talking about the fate of Athens. He was also intrigued by a stylistic differential in the three plays.
I always think of these three tragedians as being associated with different times of a metaphoric day. Aiskhylos is dawnlike, with iconic ideas, images, and action emerging into the light of consciousness. Euripides presents a twilight where everything is susceptible to tricks of a fading light, where tonalities are hard to grasp, where one moment is
an azure sunset, the next a starless night. Between them, Sophokles, under the glare of a noon sun that leaves nothing unexposed. You can see Brian was persuasive. Anyway, the idea of another Oresteia grew on me, partly because I like big translation projects; partly because it seems important to get Greek plays performed more; partly because, as John Cage says, “There are things to hear and things to see and that’s what theater is.”