The Oresteia is a trilogy by Aeschylus, one of the foremost playwrights of ancient Greece. It encompasses three plays: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Furies. It tells the tragic tale of the House of Atreus, whose inhabitants have been cursed and are doomed to play out their bloody, vengeful destinies. At the beginning of the first part, the Trojan War has ended and the Greek general, Agamemnon, is returning victorious to his wife Clytemnestra. Yet she finds it difficult to forgive his sacrifice of their daughter, Iphigenia, who was killed to ensure the Greek fleet fair winds in their voyage to Troy. Her desire for vengeance, and its dire consequences, instigates the action of these poetic tragedies. (Summary by Elizabeth Klett)
Cast:
AGAMEMNON, king of Mycenae - StephenC
AEGISTHUS, cousin to Agamemnon - mb
ORESTES, son of Agamemnon - David O’Connell
CLYTEMNESTRA, wife of Agamemnon - Christie Nowak
CASSANDRA, a Trojan princess - Kristin Hughes
ELECTRA, sister of Orestes - Claire Goget
APOLLO, god of the Delphic oracle - Andrew Lebrun
ATHENA, goddess of wisdom - Catharine Eastman
PYTHIA, a priestess of Apollo - Kirsten Ferreri
A WATCHMAN at Mycenae - Joe Earley
A HERALD from Troy - tipaew
NURSE to Orestes and Electra - Elizabeth Klett
ATTENDANT of Aegisthus - Fr. Richard Zeile of Detroit
ATTENDANT WOMAN of Athena - Jennifer Stearns
NARRATOR - Justin Barrett
CHORUS in Agamemnon - Andy Minter
CHORUS in The Libation-Bearers - Jc Guan
CHORUS in The Furies - Kara Shallenberg, Rosalind Wills, and Christie Nowak
PYLADES - Annoying Twit
Book Coordinators: Kirsten Ferreri, Sarah Jennings, Elizabeth Klett, and David Lawrence
Chapters
From LibriVox, read by volunteers and in the public domain. LibriVox page (opens librivox.org), the text (opens gutenberg.org), all files on the Internet Archive (opens archive.org).