Theatre
Erophile
Ερωφίλη
Georgios Chortatsis · 1637
Synopsis
Panaretos, son of a king killed in war, was taken in as a child by the king of Egypt without anyone knowing his origin, raised alongside Princess Erophile, then made a general after a victory over the Persians. The two young people love each other and marry in secret, while the king promises his daughter to the heir of a rival kingdom.
Context
Composed in Rethymno around 1600, the play follows closely Giovanni Battista Giraldi's Orbecche, first staged in Ferrara in 1541 and published in 1547, whose plot and distribution of roles it takes over; four lyrical interludes drawn from the episode of Rinaldo and Armida in Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered are inserted between the acts. Printing came in Venice in 1637, seen through the press by Matthaíos Kigálas, whose interventions altered the text and softened its dialect for a non-Cretan public; a second edition, due to the Cretan Ambrósios Gradenígos, restored a more faithful form in 1676. Geneviève Wallon gave the French translation from L'Harmattan in 2019, joined to Panoria as the author wished.
Who it is for
Five acts in Cretan rhymed verse, more than three thousand lines, preceded by a prologue spoken by Death. The French edition includes both plays.
Prizes and reception
The oldest of the three surviving tragedies of Cretan theatre, and the one the Greek public has revived for the longest time, in editions as well as in local versions.