page_title: Oreste
section_title: Synopsis
hierarchical_section_title: Oreste / Synopsis
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: Museo civico archeologico (Bologna)
context_page_description: Oreste is an opera by George Frideric Handel in three acts. The libretto was anonymously adapted from Giangualberto Barlocci’s L’Oreste, which was in turn adapted from Euripides' Iphigeneia in Tauris.
  The opera is a pasticcio, meaning that the music of the arias was assembled from earlier works, mainly other operas and cantatas also by Handel. The recitatives and parts of the dances are the only parts composed specifically for this work. Handel had put together similar works before, fitting the music of pre-existent arias to new words, but this was the first time he had made an opera in this way using entirely his own music. He assembled a collection of his arias from the previous years, ranging from Agrippina of 1709 to Sosarme of 1732, binding the pre-existent music seamlessly together with the newly-written recitatives to create a new musical drama.
  The opera is in Italian, although it was written and performed in England. The lead role was written for the castrato Giovanni Carestini. It is now performed by either a countertenor or soprano.
context_section_description: Scene: Tauris (modern day Crimea), in legendary antiquity
  Years before the action of the opera, the young princess Ifigenia narrowly escaped death by sacrifice at the hands of her father, Agamemnon. At the last moment the goddess Diana, to whom the sacrifice was to be made, intervened and replaced Ifigenia on the altar with a deer, saving the girl and sweeping her off to Tauris. She has since been made a priestess at the temple of Diana in Tauris, a position in which she has the gruesome task of ritually sacrificing foreigners who land on King Toante's shores. Ifigenia hates her forced religious servitude and has had a prophetic dream about her younger brother Oreste and believes that he is dead. Meanwhile, Oreste has killed his mother Clytemnestra to avenge his father Agamemnon with assistance from his friend Pilade. He becomes haunted by the furies for committing the crime and goes through periodic fits of madness.
  To this mythological material adapted from Euripides' Iphigenia in Tauris, Oreste adds the character of Oreste's wife Hermione, searching for him to aid him in his quest for restoration of his mind and peace of spirit, and also adds another character, Filotete, not present in the Euripides play.
caption: Statuette of the Artemis (Diana) of Ephesus
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