Debut: Genoa, Sala Eleonora Duse, 29 February 1968 (RaiTeche movie)
| Translation | Edoardo Sanguineti |
| Direction | Luigi Squarzina |
| Assistant director | Marcello Aste |
| Set and costume | Gianni Polidori |
| Music | Franco Donatoni |
| Production | Teatro Stabile di Genova |
Characters and performers
| Dioniso | Giulio Brogi |
| Tiresia | Guido Lazzarini |
| Cadmo | Vittorio Sanipoli |
| Penteo | Omero Antonutti |
| A soldier | Gianni De Lellis |
| The shepherds | Gianpiero Bianchi Antonello Pischedda Maggiorino Porta |
| The messenger | Nando Gazzolo |
| Agave | Lucilla Morlacchi |
| The coryphaea | Carmen Scarpitta |
| First bacchant | Maria Teresa Bax |
| Second bacchant | Maria Grazia Grassini |
| The bacchantes | Lu Bianchi Carla Bolelli Carla Cassola Simona Caucia Sara Di Nepi Antonietta Forlani Ilaria Guerrini Jeanine Hendy Luciana Negrini Cecilia Todeschini |
This rereading of Euripides is an extraordinary, modernizing version with original theatrical inventions, staged for the first time indoors.
Squarzina introduces Euripides’s tragedy into a context of current motifs, while experimenting with new modes of interpretation. Particularly significant is the Establishment clothing worn by King Pentheus, Cadmus, and Tiresias, with Dionysus dressed as a sparkling guru and the Bacchantes as hippies. The Greek tragedy thus brings present-day political and cultural questions to the fore, because, as the director himself says, “…a text’s being classical means being perennially contemporary.” He therefore deems it essential to make all great theatre truly contemporary for today’s public, and to make today’s audience feel contemporary with the great insights that chose to express themselves in theatrical form.
The Rai news service
We thank Teatro Nazionale di Genova for the concession of the use of photographic material.