Orestes
In Greek mythology, the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, who killed his mother on the instructions of Apollo because she and her lover Aegisthus had murdered his father. He was subsequently hounded by the Furies until he was purified, and acquitted of the crime of matricide.
| On the advice of Apollo, he took refuge in the temple of Athena at Athens, where he was tried before the Council of Areopagus, and released by Athena when the votes were equally divided. According to another tradition he was redeemed by fetching an image of the goddess Artemis from her temple at Tauris (the Crimea) where Iphigenia, the sister whom he believed his father had sacrificed, had become a priestess. |
Orestes
| Opera by Felix Weingartner (libretto by composer, after Aeschylus). It was produced in Leipzig on 15 February 1902. |
