I love this because I feel it is one of the purest representations of Ancient Greek theatre; the set up, the instruments, the costumes, the rhythm of the lines, the male-only cast. It really makes it easier to visualize and understand what it may have been like then.

This is soooooo good. Why can't we have productions like these nowadays? Bring the Greeks back.

this is the single most intense thing i've ever watched in my whole life

@ElliotBrownJingles

7 жыл бұрын

Same!

@chrisstorrer

6 жыл бұрын

Thinking the same thing. The chorus talking about Iphigenia's sacrifice was horrific.

@CranberryCrimson

4 жыл бұрын

I turned it on to fall asleep to, ready to be bored - now I'm wide eyed, wide awake and freaked out.

@hydraelectricblue

3 жыл бұрын

I know right it's just intense.

The way this was done, as close to the ancient manner as possible, is regrettably scarce to find these days. This troupe’s performance of the trilogy is the only example that really achieves the desired effect. I wish there was a company producing the tragedies in this way today, with the great music, masks, and everything. Bravo is all I can say!

@basse9914

Жыл бұрын

What do you mean by "the ancient manner"? Im drawn to this play

@SeverEnergia

Жыл бұрын

Me too!!

@murph_mustela

24 күн бұрын

Can I ask, shouldn't Clytemnestra have been performed by a boy or young man though?

I saw this production of entire trilogy on the TV back in the early 80's and am delighted to find it on line.

@thedativecase9733

4 жыл бұрын

So did I! I remember I had flu but was determined to stay up and watch it through. It was worth it. I never thought I would see it again.

It is such a privilege to be able to see these ancient plays, thank you so much for posting them.

@LyndonLaRoucheArchive

7 жыл бұрын

You're quite welcome.

@georgetheodoridis3303

7 жыл бұрын

A far better translation (much, much closer to the original Greek) is here: bacchicstage.wordpress.com/aeschylus-2/aeschylus/

@miked3308

2 жыл бұрын

Yes ur white privilege died on 02/07/1992

@bluebellbeatnik4945

Жыл бұрын

1983 isn't that ancient.

@Alexlalpaca

Жыл бұрын

@@bluebellbeatnik4945 Almost as if the date of the performance doesn't fit the date of the creation.

Thanks for posting. I saw this in person. It was one of the most memorable experiences I have ever had in the theatre.

@ConstantiaVerted

6 жыл бұрын

Wow you lucky sod.

@TheRarebird12

7 ай бұрын

I saw it, too. Couldn't agree more. I saw it three times - couldn't stay away. Steeped in it!

Tony Harrison who translated it was born in Leeds, Yorkshire, UK, same as me! Harrison Birtwistle who did the music lived near me in Teddington, Middlesex, UK and his son was in the same class as my son! All these coincidences! Marvellous work!

The grainy video quality and surreal look of the masks makes me feel like this is a video that tells me where the chainsaw wielding lunatic has my family imprisoned. Great acting and fascinating historical context, I would just never want to watch it without a crucfix in my hand. Holy moly.

@alyssacdavis8246

6 жыл бұрын

my exact feelings haha

@kaas7439

3 жыл бұрын

Thanks for the warning, I was going to watch it in the middle of the night..

This is my favorite version of Agamemnon. Clytemnestra is everything to me. I've memorized all her lines and always find myself retelling the story of the beacons in my mind

@georgetheodoridis3303

7 жыл бұрын

A far better translation, much, much closer to the original can be read here: bacchicstage.wordpress.com/aeschylus-2/aeschylus/

@c7261

5 жыл бұрын

While it might be technically a more accurate translation - it might not reproduce the rhythms, rhymes or thematic resonance as well. That's the brilliant/terrible thing about translating an ancient play. It's difficult to know the original intentions, so it's subject to interpretation.

@georgetheodoridis3857

5 жыл бұрын

@@c7261 I've seen it produced, perhaps some dozen or so times. The rhythm is created by the actor ad the chorus. My aim was to also make sure that the student of the language can easily work out what I've done when translating, something which other translators completely neglected. Often, they (the translators) go off into their own tangent where they want to show off their own poetic skills rather that what the author of the play has created. This is a very common flaw and one only has to check out some of the most popular translations of Homer. Wonderful reads but not Homer. This is why I set out to do these translations: to show the author's skill, not mine. Ancient theatre is not modern theatre. Nothing in this production is "authentic." The audience is not "authentic." It is jingoism to try and furnish and concoct some play that is "authentic" to today's audiences by making the actors wear masks or sing, or playing instruments of some sort. There would certainly be no intolerably noisy percussion. The word was totally the star of the show. The word was the message and the message was of utmost importance. I see little of Aeschylus here and a great deal of "over;" "over acting," "over directing," "over FXing." Pity. Brussells did a great job of this, so did Christchurch (NZ) and so did many others which I was invited to watch. Alas, they did not make youtubes out of them.

@VentraleStar

4 жыл бұрын

@@georgetheodoridis3857 you can not have the real Homer unless you read the real Homer. All translation is interpretation. You aren't showing the authors skill because that's not how language works. I'm sorry but if you are going to translate great poetry it is NOT enough to simply know the language even well...you also have to be a great poet in the language you are translating it to. No one cares about 'accuracy' when it comes out in English limp and stiff. This is why the best Homer in Ezra Pounds Cantos. He did not exactly translate Homer but he was a great enough poet to make an English Homer out of his own poem which is the best you can get.

@DavidHHermanson

4 жыл бұрын

@@VentraleStar To bemoan "when it comes out in English limp and stiff" and then to suggest Pound's Cantos as the "Best Homer" strikes me as something of a contradiction. It was Pound himself who said of the Cantos "I cannot make it cohere." Do not mistake me, I turn to the Cantos often, perhaps more often than I should, but then I love puzzles, and Pound's work has always struck me as much a bright, often shrill typos of maze weaving as much as it is poetry. We live in an age when the masses knowledge of Homer, the great Tragedies and Classical antiquity is limited to titans, gods and heroes, all equipped thanks to the modern magic of cgi, with washboard abs, and programmed as supposed exemplars of American democratic values (there are few screen moments sillier than Theseus crying before his assembled warriors "For Freedom!"). Perhaps it would be of value to support rather than denigrate efforts to engage a broader audience than that handful of us who've been blessed with something like a classical education, especially when the attempt, like this one, is in so many ways an attempt toward an impossible fidelity. As the original (NY)Times reviewer noted, "Mr. Birtwistle's score is used to provide a percussive beat or ''pulse'' for the text. The performers are rigorously kept from giving their readings a naturalistic tone." These directions, along with the masks, the all but bare stage, and the all male cast were in keeping with scholarship of the 70's when Peter Hall, the director and Tony Harrison the translator began working on this Oresteia. One might complain about the use of a modern stage, but the production was actually given earlier at the amphitheater at Epidaurus, a year before its filming. This is a translation, and as such is always, as you point out, as much the art of the translator as it is of Aeschylus. It is, however, an attempt to briefly reanimate a world that is terribly alien to our own. When we watch or read the tragedies, can we understand that the playwright is himself digging into a yet further past, mining Homer and the oral traditions that fueled the Homeric vision to know the deeply felt terror of Antigone seeing her brother's body lying in the street. Can we understand what she fears for him? In this play, can we understand, or more importantly feel the rage that has animated the past war, or indeed that makes Clytemnestra proud for having murdered Cassandra and her husband? Can we feel ourselves in a world where the life of the city is governed by its gods? Indeed can we understand what it means to live at the social pinnacle of a city, living in constant dread of slave rebellion, or the birth of a mean-spirited child who will succeed the king, holding real powers of life and death? My grandfather was born before the age of flight began, in a house that was heated with coal and lit by gas. My grandmother's house was on an impoverished farm. They heated with wood the cut, dried and split, and lit the night with oil lamps. I can barely imagine either of their lives as children. How much more is our collective imagination able to conjure a world without steel, where one's ability to spend an afternoon at a play depended on such leisure as granted by numberless long forgotten slaves who worked the city's fields, cut stone for its walls, smoothed its trails into roads, fetched our sons to and fro from school, and cooked and cleaned in our homes. It is in this sense of our own inability to breathe in the life of Aeschylus' Athens that I'm urging us all to be a bit more forgiving.

I quite agree with you about the 'copyright foolishness'. It is depriving so many of so much. For those of us that cannot get to major centres like New York or London, filmed dramas would be a god-send. The Oresteia is a masterpiece, as is Shakespeare's works, and in an ideal world should be accessible to all. Thank you so much for downloading. You are doing us all a great service.

Love the chorus’ impact in this performance, truly surreal

Appropriate the day after Peter Hall's death to recall this stunning production. I was lucky enough to see it at the time, with some of my students and we were all held, astonished and changed by the experience. At the very least it was impossible to see the theatre of the time quite the same again. This is not meant as a valediction of ancient Greek tragedy, but of a simply wonderful production.

Fresh Prince of Atreus... (cue the music) In sun drenched Argos born and raised in the oikos was where i spent most of my days chilling out relaxing and maxing all cool and hurlin' some javelins up around school when a guy called aegisthus, he was up to no good started makin' trouble in the neighbourhood my mom killed my dad and the house she defiled so now i'm living with my sister electra in exile!

@moriahfeatherrae8265

4 жыл бұрын

This is awesome! And I heard it in Will Smith's voice lol

@electronclouds8280

3 жыл бұрын

god bless this comment

@miked3308

2 жыл бұрын

Wow

@twistedhairball

Жыл бұрын

Still relevant.

@RHampton

Жыл бұрын

Emmy winning comment.

I am glad I saw this production. Beyond the life affirming effects of the art itself and the conversation it induced in my family, it is brave to try to glimpse back to our theater's earliest roots. It is easy to look foolish when walking this path - they did not and they succeeded with aplomb. To the kids forced to watch this for class, try to be zen and keep an open mind. This troupe is trying to recreate a time when proto-theater became theater. It's a hard thing. To that silly man who decided this was the forum for a feminist critique. What a nanny you are. There are modern interpretations of Aeschylus readily available. But then you wouldn't have the opportunity to scold anyone, would you? Bravo, thanks for posting this.

@Nosferatu981

7 жыл бұрын

It must have been an amazing experience to see this live. If only I had a time machine on hand.

@jeanettesdaughter

Жыл бұрын

Now who’s scolding⁉️ We read through our own eyes. A woman who kills the man who killed her girl…well… the big sister who with her brother kills her enraged and plotting mother…well…a girl who defies the king trying to appease the punishing gods by burying the rotting corpse of her avenging brother…well!That’s so old it’s new! And where did it all begin? In heaven, a nasty spat between jealous women and the all power of gods who favor their sons, the Demi gods/sons of raped or seduced girls on earth. Stevie Wonder could see a vindication of the rights of women in this. Doesn’t take a feminist. Takes a detective, Aeschylus, finding a crime. According to scripture a Millennia later “ in their hearts is a disease.” An after the fall accusation. As for the pagan “what comes first is suffering, then awareness.” Aeschylus noticed like Stevie Wonder could that some “feel like a woman , but talk like a man. “ That’s pure Aeschylus. It’s all there in the text. The details. Overarching an anti war drama: a war begun in heaven among gods and goddesses more petty than human beings. Yet they escape the suffering they cause, we do not. All. There. In. The. Text.

Thank you so much for posting this video. I am truly grateful!

The masks are most effective. The actors make an attempt at rhythm in their speech; to the ancient Greek dramatist, rhythm would be very important. I have found most helpful Hugh Lloyd-Jones translation with extensive line by line notes of "The Oresteia".

@StevenTorrey

8 жыл бұрын

+Steven Torrey Subtitles would have been very helpful....

@gchristopherklug

7 жыл бұрын

Do you know which translation this performance is?

@AndHaydon

7 жыл бұрын

Tony Harrison

I love this. I want my students to see the way it was. We can talk about it until we are blue but to see it. I even showed select bits to my younger students and they wanted more.

If these videos ever leave I will die. I love them. Thank you.

Thanks so much for posting this!

La mejor versión que he visto de La Orestiada ¡Maravillosa puesta en escena!

@AbandonedMaine

5 жыл бұрын

De nada.

I know what you mean. After a period of some 30 years I am now taking post-graduate courses in Greek drama, and boy is it tough! However, it is productions like these which clarify so many things, as well as being beautiful to just watch. So thank you OaklandLYM for a valuable and timely reminder of what true drama can be and what it can mean to us all. .

Fascinating! 💗 Currently studying Greek Tragedies!

Shout out to the Soldier in the beginning with a 5 minute monologue

This is an amazing performance.

I wish there were productions of the Oresteia more often!

Beautiful, profound performance

I watched this for a world civilization class. I was riveted. It’s so intense.

Thanks for posting from japan.

It seems more understandable to me after resetting the speed to .75. It then takes longer to see the entire performance, but there is a price for everything. Thanks for posting.

I love this play!

Good point. When we brought the Leipzig Germany St. Thomas Boys Choir to the US in 1998, it was exactly on that issue. There was also a demonstration by a young man on the effect of heavy metal and classical music on mice.

I"m searching like crazy for the screenplay. I can't find anywhere. I just loved the musicallity of this translation.

Very impressive. I like to think that this performance is as close to the original Greek performance as possible.

I find this fascinating.

Beautiful. 🎭

@Christopher Haines The chorus are basically the narrators...they tell you what's gonna happen without affecting the characters...as if not to disturb "fate"

I have other videos with classes about all of those which you might like. I think if you watch my other two videos of the trilogy, the actors are listed in the credits.

Wonderful stuff...thank you OaklandLYM.

Truly art

Εύγε φίλε! Η μάθηση είναι ποτέ όσον αφορά τη φρεσκάδα της νεολαίας του, ακόμα και για τα παλιά.

incredible.

wonderful

I don't know why this affects me, but it does, and I'm glad it does....❤❤

INCOMPARABLE! Saw this trilogy in the theatre when it was first produced, then again when broadcast on the BBC. I'm so glad to find it on KZread but please, Please, PLEASE, when is a cleaned up version going to be available to stream, or on DVD? I'm sure I'm not the only person who'd be willing to pay quite a substantial fee for a decent copy of it.

So here I am watching❤

Clytemnestra is a beast

Imagine watching that at the Epidaurus theater...only dreaming

Trouble at mill for our Agamemnon

Didn't know Baldrick had a knack for acting in greek plays :D

No subtitles available,even if I have read Chinese version of Agamemnon by Aeschylus, it's kinda impossible to catch up with the play.

Thank you so much for making these available here on youtube. The whole trilogy is absolutely amazing; morrison's text is perfect, birtwistle's music is astounding. I teach a university music course which is concerned with music and text, and i'm going to show my students these. invaluable! (Is there any chance of getting a copy of the trilogy from you? a copy of your copy?! I would be endlessly grateful!)

@marnosmarket695

Жыл бұрын

Are the other 2 on here? I would love to see them

Heard Tony Robinson (Baldrick and Time Team) in the Chorus

Clytemnestra said: Anna oop

@madamedellaporte4214

4 жыл бұрын

She did, not say.

I found this while looking for a 1979 TV Mini-series based on Oresteia, starring Patrick Magee as Αγαμεμνων and Diana Rigg as Κλυταιμνηστρα. Is it available anywhere?

Great. Orijinal. Thank you

Good...!

Thanks so much for these. It's just a shame the actors all seem to have used too much Botox.

Wow - I saw this on TV in the early 1980s and vividly remember Philip Donaghy as Clytemnestra! I actually saw him in Obsen's "Ghosts" last night at the Kingston Rose Theatre! He is of course unrecognisable now.

21:47 had me howling 😂

I didn't know the Ancient Greeks were from Yorkshire.

Which translation are you using? Obviously, the one you're reading from is different from the one written by Tony Hall which the production is using.

Nice.

I've read all of the Ancient Greek plays, and I've tried to find as many recorded performances of them online as possible (provided they aren't done by community college or high school students, because there's only so low a bar I can tolerate when it comes to acting and casting and other stuff-these works deserve professional attention). To this day, this trilogy still remains perhaps the most authentic and the most enjoyable (that is, the closest to what the Ancient Athenians themselves would have actually witnessed) that I've managed to find, with only William Shatner's Oedipus Rex providing any competition. I really wish more of the ancient plays got treatments like this, or at least ones that actually get recorded. I don't like actually going to plays in person, and besides that I like having a recording I can watch anytime I please. It's a shame that most of these works are relegated to piss-poor student performances that cast kids who can't act and written by hacks who can't direct (and worse, who always dress the actors up in current-day clothing and some stupid postmodern bs).

@LyndonLaRoucheArchive

2 жыл бұрын

Lol. It's too bad the tapes were in such poor condition.

@jrb4935

2 жыл бұрын

William Shatner's Oedipus Rex, lol.

@Kira1Lawliet

2 жыл бұрын

@@jrb4935 I mean, it's just as hammy as it sounds, but at least it strives for authenticity.

@DrDG-om8xc

Жыл бұрын

Young voices cannot achieve the tonal variety that mature voices can but even this production does not provide the variety of pitch and tone I yearn for and remember of famous actors of the last century.

We'll never see the National do this type of show again. Today it would probably be done in some slightly pretentious artsy/avant-garde crap.

@parkerpayne6382

4 жыл бұрын

Well it already is pretty Avant-garde. If it was any more avant-garde, audiences would not be able to understand it.

@eggy12358

4 жыл бұрын

Right... cuz this screams no pretension whatsoever...

@MrOdsplut

4 жыл бұрын

Eggy This is more or less how it was originally performed

@ignotumperignotius630

4 жыл бұрын

pretty much, every idiot wants to leave a mark on theatre, and they end up making a mess of the classics.

@Dgoc813

4 жыл бұрын

MrOdsplut yes and it was pretentious and avant garde back then too. Agamemnon being 80% chorus was clearly subversive and different at the time

is the music periid correct(as far as we know)? just found a new old rabbit hole

All three of the tapes of the Oresteia were found at the Los Angeles library. I didn't see copies of the ones you mentioned.

I'm about 97% certain that one of the choir members is Tony Robinson - Baldrick from Blackadder.

@johncrofts1194

3 жыл бұрын

You're right. There's quite a few familiar actors in this production.

Any chance of uploading the other two plays from this production of the Oresteia? I can't find them anywhere, and they only seem to be available from a couple of libraries internationally. (Including Oakland, I guess?) Thanks for posting the video. You're doing our culture a rare service. And no thanks to Channel 4 copyright foolishness that simply kills cultural heritage such as this! (Witness ShakespeareAndMore's blocked playlist.)

is it possible that you possess and also can upload peter hall's the oedipus plays or the bacchai?? i would reeeaaally appreciate it :)

Masks...this is awesome..perfect. All male cast...very illuminating and eerily real.

20:01 Did he just say 'concrete'? Tut tut. I knew I recognised Tony Robinson's voice! He plays the servant.

This play is so amazing!! I don't know if anyone knows an answer to this... but are there any other performances Phil Donaghy was in? I've fallen in love with his acting after seeing this. x3

OK now to fans of Frazier the sitcom I'm watching this video because I'm trying to derive what he meant when he said in one episode that this lady character from the show "Danced Agamemnon at Jacob's pillow" I haven't seen any dances in this But it's Frazier so I assumed he was talking about the Orestia Agamemnon... EDIT: Jacob's Pillow is a dance facility in Western Massachusetts. So, it's about threatening Martin with having to see an overly long slide show depicting scenes of modern dance.

No one: Cladymnestra: "Well looks like we gotta ruin someone's day."

It left me wanting more. I found the translation comletely different from the one I have by Petre Meineck - just as excellent in a more poetic way.

@thedativecase9733

4 жыл бұрын

Sorry this response is several years too late but... the translation was by the English poet Tony Harrison and if I remember rightly it was made specifically for this production.

You're very welcome.

Are you doing it so you can put on your own productions?

over my head

@kenzdawg Sorry, this was the only videotape available at the library.

has anyone filmed Tantalus do you know ? other than 'Behind the Mask'

"The Greek armies have taken the city of Priam!" The Chorus: 😮😮😮

good video, good excuse to watch youtube as 'revision' and helped with my exam :P i doubt aeschylus would have said 'blasted beacon ' though :L

@zamabassanova925

2 жыл бұрын

Hahah thats true. The new translation does not include that :)

Who do the chorus represent in this? Are they townspeople?

The mighty Tony Robinson; is it thou?!

Whose production is it?

Came to watch an ancient greek play Got a Yorkshireman lol

Thanks for posting! Those Greeks did have long attention spans, didn't they?

@Mercutiossword

5 жыл бұрын

They were probably drinking

@OreadNYC

3 жыл бұрын

Well, of course they did -- it took much more time to do pretty much everything back then because of the lack of technology, so they had to be patient. One reason why so many people have such short attention spans these days is because technology has taken care of so many difficult tasks for us or at least has made it possible for us to do them much more easily and quickly so that we no longer have as much need to concentrate.

♡

looks like a creepypasta

My setup here is pretty basic, but its possible to burn a copy for you since I still have the digitized copies on my HD.

is everything being black and white but some characters makeup and costuming or a camera editing effect? please say that it’s makeup because i want it to be so badly

@OreadNYC

3 жыл бұрын

I would imagine not. My guess is that the use of color was used as a way of distinguishing important and significant characters such as Clytemnestra from less important characters such as the night watchman and the chorus.

I'd always read/pronounced the name Atreus as aTRAYus Had the same thing with Telemachus in the Odyssey and read it as TeleMACKus

That is the gate password. Now what is the HOUSE password!?

My ears hear Tony Robinson!

I thought I recognised Tony Robinson's voice!

@lilgoofballwannabe I assume that if you put his name in any search engine, his acting resume will be available.

This version of the Oresteia is by The BBC National Theatre, a TV production filmed in 1983, directed by Peter Hall using the Tony Harrison translation and/or adaption of various translations. (It would save time to have the credits in the About, above.) This production has well-crafted masks, which are evocative, non-neutral in psychological terms; the masks seem often to have the expressions that, likely, the ancient thespians, perhaps even the Greek dramatist poets (playwrights to us, thanks to the Elizabethan dramatist and poet, Ben Johnson), might approve of with wide-eyed astonishment. The diction and passion of the voices are superb and a credit to the British tradition. But, the too-loud, non-period music is an intrusive distraction, an affront to the otherwise close rendering of the original Greek. At least, find and use an aulos, a kithara and/or lyre to accompany these characters who are supposed to be Ancient Greeks, not pub-crawlers in London. Furthermore, there is one Greek tool that needs banishment from the reproduction of the dramatic literature from Aeschylus through Moliere. Banish the patriarchal and idiotic use of men portraying women. First and foremost it is confusing; second, yet arguably foremost, it panders to the legacy of sexism; third, it is detrimental in its sexism because it denies the performance of talented women in the theater, today. Besides, very few in the audience want to hear only male voices; it is unrealistic and an overarching tragic flaw of theater, until roughly the 19th century. Yes, you could argue that Clytemnestra is a co-opted prisoner of the patriarchy; but she does break free of it, albeit with the help of Aegisthus, perhaps some minor gods and the like.

@CiceroAntonius

10 жыл бұрын

I agree. Women should play women's roles now. Nowadays it makes no sense for men to play these roles. I know that was how it was done 2500 years ago, but it really is better with female voices.

@marquemorris9445

9 жыл бұрын

***** You make some valid points, but there really is no need for the abuse. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Why do you have to be so rude and abusive to someone who expresses theirs? Sounds like you need some anger management!

@ElliotBrownJingles

7 жыл бұрын

"Needs banishment"? No one's stopping you from recreating this play and casting it however you wish. Let the director of this version do as he pleases. If he wants to keep the Greek tradition of an all-male cast for historical reasons then that's his prerogative. There are all-female troupes out there for that matter and I don't see anyone complaining about that.

@ConstantiaVerted

6 жыл бұрын

One of the uses made of men playing women in Greek Tragedy, was to highlight that women such as Clytaemnestra, Medea etc, were not 'normal' women. The determination with which Clytaemnestra pursues her goals and stuff were seen as masculine qualities. I personally find the otherworldly look of these beings evocative.

@martind349

6 жыл бұрын

Women plied more generally. The theater provided a different and specified format for other inclination. The men performed women with skill. It is perfectly normal for acting to beget acting. People lived short, cruel lives; politics had a humane density, confiscation was rife. The state happily played along with the sexless theater of male presentation.

One of those voices sounds like Orlando Bloom

"...η ποίηση είναι κάτι πιο επιστημονική και σοβαρά από την ιστορία, γιατί η ποίηση τείνει να δώσει γενικές αλήθειες, ενώ η ιστορία δίνει ιδιαίτερη γεγονότα." -Aristotle, Poetics

@alyctus

7 жыл бұрын

Το διάβασα πρόσφατα αυτό και είναι από τα αγαπημένα μου ρητά. Ο Percy Shelley έχει γράψει ολόκληρο δοκίμιο για την αλήθεια που κρύβει η ποίηση, το "Defence of Poetry".