Racine’s sparest of tragedies, Bérénice (1670), a work that dissects the impossibility of love, is laden with the “majestic sadness” that the playwright considered a source of pleasure for his audience.
Titus has been proclaimed emperor and arrives in Rome accompanied by Bérénice, the Queen of Palestine, whom he now looks forward to marrying after years of mutual love. The Senate opposes the marriage, lifting the hopes of King Antiochus, who is in love with Bérénice.
This chamber play of whispers and unconsummated passion, rendered in decapentasyllabic verse in Stratis Paschalis’s translation, is orchestrated by Themelis Glynatsis, a director known for his unorthodox stage aesthetics and a methodical excavator of the rhythms embedded in silence and words
Titus: Nestor Kopsidas
Antiochus: Ieronimos Kaletsanos
Phénice: Alexandra Delitheou
Αrsace: Sotiris Tsakomidis
Paulin: Thanasis Dovris
Rutile: Klimis Empeoglou