Bacchae

The Bacchae, one of the most important texts of ancient theatre, is on stage at the Palladium Theatre, directed by Gianluca Guidotti and Enrica Sangiovanni.

Written by Euripides while he was at the court of Archelaus, king of Macedonia, between 407 and 406 BC, shortly before the author died a few months after completing it, the work was performed in Athens a few years later, probably in 405 BC, under the direction of the author's son (or grandson), also called Euripides. The tragedy was performed as part of a trilogy that also included Alcmaeon at Corinth (now lost) and Iphigenia at Aulis, thanks to which the author obtained a posthumous victory at the Great Dionysia of that year.

The plot centers on the vengeance of the god Dionysus against the Theban women who doubted his divine birth, including Agave, mother of Pentheus, king of Thebes. When the women go to Mount Cithaeron to celebrate the Bacchic mysteries, Pentheus is persuaded by the god to follow him, disguised as a woman, up the mountain. Pentheus' mother, Agave, and the Bacchantes, in the throes of Dionysian delirium, mistake him for a lion and tear him to pieces. When Agave returns to consciousness, she recognizes with horror the head of her son in what she believed to be the lion's head and was carrying as a trophy. The god's vengeance is accomplished and the tragedy ends with the latter's triumph. The Dionysian inebriation which pervades the entire tragedy must be understood as the drama of human weakness in the face of the power of divinity.

Directed by Gianluca Guidotti and Enrica Sangiovanni, the story of Dionysus becomes a multiple journey that starts from far away and overlaps with the Indian legends of Śiva, where the human being is in communion with everything, with the wild life of an archaic past. The spectators find themselves immersed in an ambiguous, mysterious, threatening and dark world in which for the first time an actor appears on stage who declares himself to be Dionysus, the god of the theater.

With Diana Dardi, Gianluca Guidotti, Pouria Jashn Tirgan, Giuseppe Losacco, Andrea Maffetti, Enrica Sangiovanni, Giacomo Tamburini; musical score: Patrizio Barontini; stage movements: Giuditta de Concini; production: Archivio Zeta.

Photo: Facebook official page of the Palladium Theatre