In the Summer of 88 I was invited to take part in a new music project organised by Covent Garden and Dartington Summer School. Four composers and writers, a group of singers and a couple of accompanists were joined in this adventure (The Garden Venture) to produce a series of music theatre pieces, which were performed at the end of our two weeks stay. Agamemnon takes a bath was first created then, firstly written only for baritone and piano in response to a project given in the form of a map of Greece and the title.
Nicholas Till and I found in Aeschylus the following:
When Paris abducted Helen and provoked the Trojan War, Agamemnon and Menelaus were absent from home for ten years.
Agamamnon’s wife, Clytaemnestra had small cause to love him: he had married her by force after killing her former husband Tantalus, and then gone away to war, on his way he sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia at Aulis in order to be able to go ahead with his enterprise in Troy. He brought back with him, King Priam’s daughter, Cassandra as his lover.
Clytaemnestra greeted her travel-worn husband, unrolling a purple carpet for him and led him to the bath-house.
As all Greek myths, this one is an archetype, which can easily find representation in our times, as grotesque as it might seem.
Agamemnon takes a bath was first performed at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 1990.
Hilda Paredes.