Page 13 - GALIET MUSIC´S METAPHOR: The House of Atreus IV

Agamemnon: walking on the purples of gods and believing that he ascending to reclaim the throne of Argos.
The visual impact of the tapestries remains as vivid in one’s mind as Agamemnon’s murder. The scene of his murder shows more textual affinities than discrepancies. Clytemnestra’s bloodied appearance on stage, confident and unrepentant, ruthless and unshakable, follows the text’s effect, particularly when she exclaims on stage that, “she glories in it!” She also appears in garments clotted with gore matching, theatrically, the textual effect where Agamemnon “gasps out quick blood from his throat wound” (Ag. 1389). Likewise, the chorus provides a unique textual spectacle after Agamemnon’s and Cassandra’s murders: it breaks apart. The breaking up of the chorus shows a most unique instance in Greek tragedy, only replicated in Sophocle’s Ajax. Consequently, the chorus, as in the text, no longer represents a collective Apollonian thought; rather, before our eyes, it scatters into many frantic Dionysian-like voices that bemoan the imminent fall of the House of Atreus. Solidarity, thus, becomes an “Agamemnian corpse” 3⁄4 it will partially return, only after Athena’s fair trial. In contrast to these textual-theatrical affinities, minor textual-theatrical discrepancies do not alter the overall theatrical effect in “The House of Atreus.” Although a tense procession of drums effectively stresses Agamemnon’s deathblow, Agamemnon does not utter his final “I have been struck deep, a fatal blow” (Ag. 1342-1343). Similarly, the lack of central doors on the stage, expected on the classical skene, keeps a third of the audience in ambivalence: we don’t know whether the body, the nets, the tub, and Clytemnestra’s robes are seen. Proposed classical solutions to this dilemma, a tableau scene (Ag. 1539-40) or eccyclema do not appear in the modern theatre. A tableau scene might have been too time consuming (given Clytemnestra’s sudden entry), while an eccyclema scene might have been as ineffective (given limited space). To this
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