Antigonae
opera by Carl Orff
Antigonae (Antigone), written by Carl Orff, was first presented on 9 August 1949 under the direction of Ferenc Fricsay in the Felsenreitschule, Salzburg, Austria, as part of the Salzburg Festival. Antigonae is in Orff's words a "musical setting" for the Greek tragedy of the same name by Sophocles. However, it functions as an opera.
The opera is a line-by-line setting of the German translation of Sophocles' play by Friedrich Hölderlin. However, Orff did not treat Hölderlin's translation of the play as a traditional opera libretto, but rather as the basis for a "musical transformation" of the tragic language of the drama of Ancient Greece. Sophocles's play was written in 442 BC, and Hölderlin's 1804 translation copies faithfully the mood and movement of Greek tragedy.
Roles
Synopsis
The opera begins in the early morning following a battle in Thebes between the armies of the two sons of Oedipus: Eteocles and Polynices. King Kreon, who ascended the throne of Thebes after both brothers were killed in battle, decrees that Polynices is not to be buried. Antigonae, his sister, defies the order, but is caught. Kreon decrees that she be buried alive in spite of the fact that she is betrothed to his son, Haemon.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q575371. VIAF identifies the subject as 174415123. The Library of Congress control number is no2001004210. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1949 and 1804.
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This entry incorporates text from “Antigonae” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.