Hercules Performed / / edited by Emma Stafford.

• Superior document: Classical Studies E-Books Online, Collection 2024
• TeilnehmendeR: Stafford, Emma,
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden ;, Boston : : Brill,, 2024.; ©2024
• Year of Publication: 2024
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Series: Classical Studies E-Books Online, Collection 2024.; Metaforms ; 25.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (418 pages)

Hercules Performed explores the reception of the ancient Greek hero Herakles – the Roman Hercules – on the western stage from the sixteenth century to the present day, focusing on live theatre, including tragedy, comedy and musical drama. Each chapter considers a particular work or theme in detail, exploring the interplay between classical models and a wide variety of modern performance contexts. The volume is one of four to be published in the Metaforms series examining the extraordinarily persistent figuring of Herakles-Hercules in western culture, drawing together scholars from a range of disciplines to offer a unique insight into the hero’s perennial appeal.

Table of Contents

Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- List of Figures and Table -- Notes on Contributors -- Introduction: Embodying the Hero and His Story -- Emma Stafford -- Part 1: Labours -- 1 Sandow the Modern Hercules: or the Twelve Labours of the Class-Conscious Historian of British Classics -- Henry Stead -- 2 Hercules and the Tragicomic in the Epic Theatre of Dürrenmatt -- Deborah Chatr Aryamontri -- 3 ‘Breaking News: Hercules Is the Son of Zeus’: the Chorus in Helen Eastman’s Hercules -- Sofia Frade -- 4 ‘The Moral Madness of the Modern Herakles’: Collage and Fragments in Tony Harrison’s The Labourers of Herakles and the Harrison Archive -- Owen Hodkinson -- Part 2: Madness -- 5 The Madness of Hercules from Euripides to the Renaissance -- Neil W. Bernstein -- 6 Herakles, Medea and the Reality of Filicide -- Sue Hamstead -- 7 Herakles in Orbit: the Role of Space in Modern Versions of Euripides’ Herakles -- Samuel D. Gartland -- Part 3: Death and Apotheosis -- 8 The Death and Apotheosis of Hercules at the Comédie-Italienne: from Senecan Tragedy to Commedia dell’Arte -- Lucia Degiovanni -- 9 The Sweet Vitality of Dancing Bodies: Classical Embodiment, Modernist Poetics, and Fascist Visions in Sophocles’ Trachiniae at Syracuse in 1933 -- Eleftheria Ioannidou -- 10 Herakles, Sex, Death, and Spin: Sophocles’ Women of Trachis and Its Adaptations -- Eleanor OKell -- 11 Directing The Wife of Heracles (2010) for a Contemporary Audience: Footballers, Hairdressers and Dispensing the Poison -- George Rodosthenous -- Part 4: Setting Hercules to Music -- 12 Hercules and Opera at the Court of Louis XIV: Ercole amante -- Jon Solomon -- 13 Shattered Female Virtue: Dejanira as Depicted in Handel’s Hercules -- Robyn M. Rocklein -- 14 ‘I Shall Sing of Herakles’: Writing a Hercules Oratorio for the Twenty-First Century -- Emma Stafford and Tim Benjamin -- 15 Herakles in Twenty-First Century Music -- Adriana F. Nogueira -- Epilogue -- Emma Stafford -- Index.