About the work
This one-act verse play, written between 1942 and 1944, forms the second part of Hauptmann's Atreus cycle, drawing on Aeschylus's "Agamemnon." Heinz Wolfgang Litten directed its premiere on 10 November 1947 at the Kammerspiele of Berlin's Deutsches Theater, with Walther Süssenguth as Agamemnon and Gerda Müller as Clytemnestra, with music by Herbert Baumann.
Plot
Ten years after the war's end, Orestes, Pylades and Electra question the temple guard Thestor about the fate of returning soldiers at a hidden temple of Demeter near Mycenae. Agamemnon comes home impoverished and disguised as a beggar, only to be murdered by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus; the captive prophetess Cassandra dies alongside him.
Cultural significance
Scholars regard this short play as the hinge connecting the cycle's first and final parts; some have drawn parallels between Agamemnon's catastrophic homecoming and the Wehrmacht's retreat in the year the play was written.