The Oresteia: The Eumenides (Peter Hall , 1983)

 "They're learning to bless, groping for goodness."

The final instalment of The Oresteia is, of course, what gives it its thematic power: the cycle of endless power can only be broken by justice, by the rational weighing of evidence rather than hot-headed revenge, an eye for an eye until everyone is blind. There's a lot of weight to a literary work so old as this which seems to articulate, and with such exquisite prose, such a fundamental tenet of civilisation- although, perhaps, we should try not to dwell too hard on the misogyny on display here, especially the belief that patricide trumps matricide because he father is "the only true parent"and mothers do not pass on anything, only acting as the vessel. This may have been widely believed, or so we're told, but presumably by those who happen never to have noticed the extremely common phenomenon of children who resemble their mother.

Still, this is a superlative translation, a superlative score, and a superlative production, for all the reasons previously mentioned. This time we get to dwell on Tony Harrison's depiction and descriptions of the main Greek gods, and it's amazing.

It's hard to see how any other production of this trilogy can match this one. The authentic style and Harrison's gloriously earthy translation combine to make something intoxicating.