Die Perser - Schauspielhaus Zürich
The army of the Persian King Dareios was defeated by the Athenians in the battle at Marathon in the year 490 BC. Ten years later, his son Xerxes went to war with a fleet of over 1000 ships to get revenge for the humiliation of the defeat. Tormented by terrifying dreams and premonitions, Atossa, the Persian King’s mother awaits news from the battle front at Salamis. An envoy has managed to escape and reports on the battle’s inhuman atrocities. The Greeks, although greatly outnumbered, lured the Persian fleet in an ambush and destroyed it.. Only King Xerxes and a small troop of soldiers have managed to escape. Xerxes returns from the battlefield heavily scarred, most of the soldiers having perished, the people of Persia annihilated.
WITH Jean-Pierre Cornu, Robert Hunger-Bühler, Daniel Lommatzsch, Oliver Masucci, Catrin Striebeck DIRECTION Stefan Pucher DRAMATURGY Klaus Missbach TEXT Aischylos MUSIC Arvild Baud VIDEO Meika Dresenkamp SET DESIGN Barbara Ehnes LIGHT DESIGN Sascha Haenschke COSTUMES Tina Klömpken PHOTO Stefan Pucher by Leonard Zubler PREMIERE Schauspielhaus Zürich, 10/2008
Schauspielhaus Zürich
Stefan Pucher, whose “Oresteia” by Aeschylos was already performed in Zurich, has staged the oldest play in world literature, in which the consequences of a ruthless war are brutally dissected.