Oratio

​Join us for a powerful and unforgettable production of Orestes by Euripides, directed by our very own Nicholas Romanos, President of the Oxford Ancient Languages Society.

🗓️ Dates: 27-30 November
📍 Venue: O’Reilly Theatre, Keble College, Oxford
🎟️ Tickets: https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/oxford-ancient-languages-society/euripides-orestes/e-koryjo

🕰️ 19:30 every evening and 14:30 on Saturday

Tickets: £12 standard price, £6 for students and under-18
(Free entry for state school parties)

This production, a unique collaborative project led by the Oxford Ancient Languages Society, will stage a complete dramatic recreation of Euripides’ play, demonstrating the vivid dramatic fruits of meticulous, interdisciplinary scholarship.

It will be performed entirely in the original Ancient Greek (with English surtitles), with authentic costumes and masks. Crucially, it will restore Euripides’ drama to its full musical glory. All the sections of the play that were originally sung have been set to music, newly composed in the ancient Greek modes, using all available evidence about Euripidean music, and incorporating an ancient fragment of music from the play that may be by Euripides’ own hand.

The chorus and our talented solo singers will be accompanied on the aulos (ancient double-pipes) by the renowned aulete Callum Armstrong, resulting in a transformative audience experience, closer than ever to the Athenian stage.

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In Argos, Orestes, with the help of sister Electra and their friend Pylades, has committed the worst crime imaginable: he has killed his own mother, in vengeance for her murder of his father, and is now tormented by the Furies. But what will happen next? Can Orestes and Electra escape death at the hands of the Argives, who see them more as criminals than as heroes? And can they rely on the help of their uncle Menelaus, who has just returned from Troy with his wife, the much-despised Helen?

As the play unfolds, we are forced ourselves to face some difficult questions: are Orestes and his friends in fact heroes or criminals? How far can the heroic ethic stretch before it becomes little more than self-parody? And above all, can we even attach a meaning to this vivid high drama?

The Orestes is one of the most exciting of Euripides’ plays, and the most popular in antiquity. It displays the height of his dramatic innovation, and—rarely for Greek tragedy—while its characters and framework are drawn from traditional mythology, the plot itself is entirely Euripides’ invention.