About the work
Opera seria with intermezzo in one act (four movements) by Hans Werner Henze to a libretto by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman after Euripides's tragedy "The Bacchae," first performed on 6 August 1966 at the Grosses Festspielhaus in Salzburg, conducted by Christoph von Dohnányi with the Vienna Philharmonic. Auden had drawn Henze's attention to the ancient material in 1962; the score was composed in under a year, beginning in late 1964.
Plot
The young Theban king Pentheus bans the newly arrived cult of the god Dionysus and has its followers persecuted. Lured by Dionysus into women's clothing, Pentheus secretly watches the ecstatic rites on Mount Cithaeron — where he is mistaken for a wild animal and killed by the Bacchantes, led by his own mother Agave in a state of frenzy. In the end Dionysus banishes the entire royal family from Thebes and proclaims his own divinity.
Cultural significance
As Henze's first fully through-composed, symphonically conceived opera, the work is seen as a deliberate engagement with Wagnerian music drama. Its premiere met with a reserved response; only a 1974 London production brought the political dimension of the conflict between repression and fanatical order to the fore, establishing the piece as one of Henze's most significant operas.