Tony Harrison: Medea: A Sex-War Opera

Length / Form Opera libretto

Allusion to Classical figure Medea, Jason, Creusa, Argonauts (including Hercules, Lynceus and Butes), Hypsipyle, Hylas, Aeetes, Alcinous, Arete, Furies, children of Medea

Allusion to Classical place Lemnos, Colchis, Macris, Corinth

Relationship to Classical text Euripides Medea is just one of many sources Harrison draws on for his own presentation of the mythology, but an extract of the text (l.410-430) is given prominence near the beginning and at the end of the play, quoted in the original Greek as well as in the Latin translation by George Buchanan (1544) and the French of Catulle Mendès’ Médée (1898). After its second appearance a prose English translation is added. The majority of the first act is taken up by episodes from the journey of the Argonauts, which provide context for the elements of the myth presented in Euripides play (i.e. Medea’s killing of her children and Creusa).

Close translation of words/phrases/excerpts Lines 410-430 of Euripides Medea appear in the original Greek, in Latin and in French (see below). After the final hearing of these three texts a chorus member remarks on the age of Euripides play and regrets that the anti-patriarchal sentiment of the lines has gone largely unheeded. She concludes “a translation’s needed” and proceeds to recite a prose English translation (Oxford, 1837).

Classical/post-Classical intertexts  Prefaced by a quotation from Claude Lévi-Strauss’ Structural Anthropology (1958): ‘We define the myth as consisting of all its versions.’ William Irwin Thompson’s The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light  (1981) is also quoted: ‘A myth is a polyphonic fugue for many voices.’ Accordingly the first act begins with, and goes on to feature, a sequence of extracts from previous plays and operas on the subject of Medea, in their original languages.

Comment Hercules is presented as a parallel to Medea; though he also kills his children he escapes vilification and is even heroised. Harrison elaborates on questions raised in Euripides play regarding the patriarchal construction and manipulation of myth.

Notes Commissioned by the New York Metropolitan Opera for music by Jacob Druckman. However, a score was never produced and so the work was not performed. Volcano Theatre Company staged a version of the play titled Medea: Sex War in 1991 (in London and Edinburgh), in which it was combined with elements of Valeria Solanis’ radical feminist textof the 1960’s, The S.C.U.M. Manifesto.