Tickets for the Mérida International Classical Theatre Festival 2025

After more than fifteen years of unsuccessful fighting against the city of Numantia, the Roman Senate sent the victorious general Scipio, who had just defeated the Carthaginians and had been crowned victor in Rome, to Hispania in 130 BC. Scipio had an imposing work of war engineering built so that no one could enter or leave Numantia, surrounding it with a deep and wide moat nine kilometres in perimeter with a series of military camps and watchtowers. He also razed the neighbouring villages to the ground so that no aid or food could reach them, which created a terrible situation as hunger became the besieged people's fiercest enemy.

The Numantines tried to break the siege in a thousand ways, but to no avail. Time went by and hunger continued to grow, which led them to eat human flesh in their desperation. And the city, now without hope, began to fill its streets with corpses, so they took the great final decision that changed the course of their history.

The legend tells how the decision of a brave boy marked the fate of Numantia, preventing Scipio from receiving the victor's crown. And Fame succeeded in fixing the end of this story forever in our memory.

Much has been written about Alexander the Great's war exploits, strategies, ambition to create the greatest empire ever known, the founding of cities, and so on. But very little is known about his love life and his true inner self.

The aim of this show is to bring the more unknown, but no less interesting, side of Macedonian Alexander the Great to today's spectators, that sweet and loving, intimate and vulnerable man who was truly Macedonian Alexander the Great.

All the characters orbit around the Sun-Alexander. Our story revolves around this sun, in the centre of Persia, together with all the main characters: Hephaestion, Krátero, Aristotle, Olympias, Roxana and above all Bagoas, the Persian eunuch who had such an influence on Alexander's intimate and sexual life.

My daughter is coming in her wedding dress and I'm going to kill her....

Iphigenia's is the first violent death of a woman in Western literature. Agamemnon, her father and head of the Greek army, sentences and nails like a flag the root of violence against girls and women at the origin of our civilisation. Following Iphigenia's trail of blood, we arrive at the sacrifice of Polyxena, Trojan princess, and the discovery sets our anger in our throats on fire: the Trojan War ended as it began, flooding the sea with virgin blood...

With Iphigenia we trace a map from ground zero of violence against women to the return home of the victorious perpetrator army. A newly created work, woven from three classical tragedies, through which the epic of the Greek victory in the Trojan War passes: Iphigenia in Aulide, Hecuba and Agamemnon. A play about the high cost that women had to pay for men to achieve glory.

Hecuba and Clytemnestra, queens of victors and vanquished, mothers of the murdered, harbour in their wombs a savage wound that opens. Rage mutates into slow fury. Here is the transformation of mothers into wild beasts... The steel gate of vengeance opens... The silence is torn by the voracious instinct of a tormented beast and a thunderous scream thirsty for murderous blood. This is the story of the forgotten and their doomed mothers. It is a rose of blood between bloody hands.

Iphigenia is a crack of light in the dark cave into which the pain and guilt of women has been thrown. A beam of light to illuminate everything, so that their names are not erased from history. Because silence is not innocent.

His tormented screams pierced my belly like cutting glass. And I was no longer afraid to burn.

The Light is Ours.

I have always wanted to do ‘Oedipus Rex’. I am a passionate devotee of psychoanalysis and mystery literature. I have always been fascinated by this extraordinary plot, in which the one who investigates a murder turns out to be the murderer himself. For some time now, I have been advocating the idea of reducing the role of the director - who, in my humble opinion, should move away from being an author back to being an interpreter. However, while it is right to go back to the text, it is also true that there is no authentic interpretative tradition of Greek tragedy. As far as we know, the texts that have come down to us are loosely comparable to opera librettos without music. In directing an ancient drama text, one starts from year zero.

The vastness of this masterpiece of humanity necessarily implies some betrayals. After a pandemic, one could move from the social theme of the plague to the Girardian theme of the scapegoat. I have chosen the path of the metaphor of knowledge. Oedipus' stubborn will to know the truth makes him seem like a kind of Ulysses who cannot avoid travelling in order to keep on knowing. Yet Oedipus' journey is an implosive one: he investigates by exploring within himself.

It will therefore be the actor himself, Luca Lazzareschi, who will play not only the protagonist, but also those who know the truth, or at least a part of it. Luca will also be Tiresias and the messenger, in dialogue with the distorted images of himself reproduced on video by Alessandro Papa, who has been collaborating with me for years. The main iconography chosen for this staging is surrealism: an almost obligatory choice for an inner journey of psychoanalytical orientation. For the music, I have decided to follow another of my passions related to this text: that of detective stories, especially the thrillers of the last century. Taking advantage of the Western as well as Eastern origin of my now regular musician, the Israeli Ran Bagno, I will not forget that Oedipus also represents the most incandescent point of one of the eternal conflicts of humanity: the struggle between two cultures.

I could never have imagined bringing this lifelong dream to life without the great acting talent of Luca Lazzareschi and Manuela Mandracchia, who will play Yocasta; without the visionary abilities of Marta Crisolini Malatesta; without the cinematographic talent in lighting of Gigi Saccomandi; and without the collaboration of actors who have already become fellow travellers, starting with Paolo Serra, with whom I have been collaborating for almost thirty years, and continuing with Francesco Biscione, Paolo Cresta and Alessandro Balletta.

Luca de Fusco, director.

Cleopatra in Love, The Musical is a theatrical production that tells the passionate love story between Cleopatra and Mark Antony, set in the final years of Ptolemaic Egypt and its struggle against the expansion of Rome. With a spectacular staging, this musical transports the audience to a world of intense emotions, political intrigue and overflowing passions, vindicating the figure of Cleopatra as one of the most fascinating women in history.

The play begins with Cleopatra sailing down the Nile, grief-stricken after being abandoned by her lover, Mark Antony. However, the story is not only a tale of impossible love, but also a reflection of Cleopatra's struggle for her people and her legacy. Between encounters and misunderstandings, both protagonists will experience moments of passion and conflict, marked by the tragic destiny that unites them. Music, dance and an impressive set design bring to life this story of love, power and the fall of empires.

Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, returns from the Trojan War. At his welcome banquet, his wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus, will murder the king as payment for Iphigenia, the daughter of the marriage offered in sacrifice by her own father to the gods to allow the king's return to Mycenae. Electra, also the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, lives outside the palace; when she realises what has happened, she decides to avenge her father's death along with her brother, Orestes, to bring justice by killing those who perpetrated it: her own mother Clytemnestra and her lover, Aegisthus.

Memories of Hadrian is a show based on the novel Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar. This world-famous text is a first-person account of the life of the Spanish-born Roman emperor. It is, in literary terms, a false autobiography. In theatrical terms, therefore, it is a false personification: Hadrian does not live in the 2nd century, although he remembers it. This union of planes is the universe of our montage. With a language full of lyricism and an admiration for his Hellenic profile, Yourcenar recreates the figure of a ruler who was as wise and magnificent as he was blind and contradictory. In both profiles, the gesture of solitude is drawn. Taking this theme as the backbone of the show, the director Beatriz Jaén has created a stage space where the echoes of this solitude resonate in the present day of power, politics and the creation of a public image.

Lluís Homar is Adriano; Adriano is also Lluís Homar: actor of himself in many circumstances, incessant seeker of philosophical answers and spiritual traveller. His voice, sometimes secret and sometimes ostensible, guides us through that common experience: the pilgrimage of being. Accompanied by an entourage that guards him as well as imprisons him, Hadrian prepares the legendary speech in which he bequeaths power to Marcus Aurelius. His memory will be the result of his empire, but also the confession of a man who has touched the limits of human experience.

Memories of Hadrian is a theatrical spectacle that represents at the same time an exciting Roman film and the intimate story of a man in dialogue with his history, with History.

In the Greek camp outside the sacked city of Troy, the captured Trojan women and their queen, Hecuba, lament their tribulations as they await the results of a lottery that will determine their fate. All the women of the royal family left alive, victims of the conquerors' cruelty, will become the property of the Greeks. As Troy is destroyed in flames, the desperate women will be taken to ships that will carry them across the Aegean to become slaves in the houses of the Greek conquerors. The tragedy lies not only in their irreversible fortune, but also in their resilience in the face of adversity. Though pain is inevitable, the search for meaning always persists.

The comedy is about which type of education is better, a severe and rigid one, or a more liberal and open one. Both models of education are embodied by the characters of Démesa and Miccióna, two old sisters with very different temperaments: while the former is a very strict mother and worried about her two sons, Esquino and Ctesifonte, the latter is a jovial and permissive spinster, who has adopted one of her nephews, namely Esquino.

Aeschinus, the liberally educated young man, seizes the courtesan Bacchide, but he does not do so to satisfy his own instincts, as everyone believes, but to give her to his timid brother Ctesiphon, who does not dare to act for fear of his mother. In reality, Aeschinus was in love with Pamphylia, the prototype of the poor but virtuous girl.

In the end, all is discovered, and the two young men manage to marry the girl they loved: Ctesiphon, the courtesan Bacchide; Eschinus, the virtuous Pamphylia. For her part, the old Démesa renounces the old principles that had guided her son's education.

Reaching the Golden Fleece should have been his greatest achievement, but it became the beginning of his misfortune.

After winning him with Medea's help, Jason swears eternal love to her and the two flee in search of a place where they can find refuge. Arriving in Corinth, Jason asks King Creon for help, but in exchange for asylum, Creon demands that he marry his daughter Creusa.

Tired of his stateless wanderings, Jason agrees and breaks his oath. The betrayal of his word unleashes the wrath of Medea and provokes the arrival of the Furies, sent by the gods to force him to face his past: only if he descends to the underworld can he be saved from the bloodbath that Medea is ready to inflict on him. Although if he fails to retrace all his steps, perhaps even descending to Hades will not be enough...

The people of Thebes relive their three great myths as a tragic chorus: Ay Teatro brings together several masterpieces of Greek tragedy performed by a theatrical chorus of young actors and musicians who relive the great myth of Thebes: the saga of Oedipus and his descendants. The young cast embodies all the characters of a family saga that transgresses social boundaries to the ultimate consequences, in an ethical and moral mirror reflecting the great founding questions of coexistence: are crimes and faults hereditary, should truth be sought at any price, is there a limit between reason and belief? In short: who are we? Ay Teatro proposes a journey to the pure origin of classical tragedy.

This is an Antigone without Creon, trapped in the dictatorship of kinship. She lives with her inner dictator. She rebels against Creon's power but succumbs to the supposedly feminine virtue of submission. Female sacrifice established as a daily habit to the limit of self-immolation and death. Antigone, Oedipus and Polynices, always migrants, cling to their essences in order to survive.

A multicultural proposal. Under the baton of award-winning director Ángel Calvente, the company Antonio Campos, in collaboration with El Espejo Negro, presents a bold and contemporary reinterpretation of the epic odyssey of Ulysses. This unique theatrical production is distinguished by a vibrant sound space that embraces an eclectic mix of musical genres, from soul, blues and rock, to the evocative sounds of Balkan, Ottoman and Mediterranean music, enriched with elements of ancient Greece. The show weaves modernity with Homeric poetry, offering the audience a rich cultural tapestry through symbolic, musical and dialectical language. This renewed odyssey promises an unforgettable adventure, navigating the waters of the fantastic and the epic, and reaffirms the company's commitment to innovation and excellence in theatrical art.

Échale La Culpa a Pandora is a play that combines 6 monologues by the actress and comedian Antonia San Juan with 6 original musical pieces performed by a string quartet and the singer Ada Rapisarda. Antonia San Juan plays the role of Cassandra, daughter of the kings of Troy, to whom the god Apollo gave the gift of clairvoyance to later burden her with the curse that not only would she not be able to keep quiet about her predictions, but that no one would believe them either.

Through Cassandra's eyes, we learn the stories of six women from Greek mythology: Pandora, Persephone, Eurydice, Penelope, Ariadne and Helen. Each one of them, through all the stereotypes they represent, conveys the role, always secondary, that has been attributed to women since ancient Greece. All of this is narrated with Antonia San Juan's unmistakable sense of humour, but without ceasing to denounce the situation and the drama that all this represents and that has been dragged down to the present day; after all, the Greeks are the inventors of tragicomedy.

Ada Rapisarda interprets each of these women in the songs of the play, always narrating her point of view in each of the myths. The songs are usually a soliloquy of our heroines, who denounce how they are mistreated, abandoned, forgotten, ignored... with a very emotional music, different to anything you have heard before.

Échale la Culpa a Pandora will make you laugh, it will make you cry, it will make you think, it will move you and make your hair stand on end, but, above all, it will not leave you indifferent and will make you wonder about the role of women throughout the history of humanity, since ancient Greece.

Prometheus tells the story of a titan who was chained to a rock on the high seas and condemned by Zeus to live there, alone, for eternity. Isolated, he is visited by gods, nymphs and sorceresses, some who support him and others who accuse him of having stolen fire from Olympus and shared it on earth with men. There, in the middle of the sea, he secretly plots his revenge against Zeus and, as a consequence, his release from such a terrible punishment.

Agrippina the younger (Agrippina the Younger) was one of the most influential women of her time. Her career continues to be relevant and important today.

The show is an invitation to reflect on the challenges faced by women in power: the games of influence and the way society embraces ambitious female figures and strategists.

It addresses issues of ambition, power and betrayal, which continue to be present in politics and society.

Agrippina's rise and fall is evidence of how women historically had to navigate patriarchal structures, often resorting to strategies such as political marriages and alliances to gain and maintain influence. Public figures often manipulated narratives in order to shape their image, something Agrippina did masterfully. Agrippina defied the expectations of her time, wielding power in a male-dominated world.

Two thousand five hundred years ago, a dramatic poet wrote a tragic trilogy that raises the need to establish a civic agreement that would end the endless cycles of revenge that plague coexistence. This poet, known as Aeschylus, conceived not only a work of art, but also a vehicle for proposing a radical change in the concept of justice.

Through characters swept away by cycles of resentment and violence, Aeschylus shows us how, in an unexpected turn toward a tragically happy ending, gods and mortals join forces to found an institution that promises to put an end to vigilante justice, marking the birth of a new chapter in civilization.

We present the Oresteia with the ambition of building a bridge between the myths of Ancient Greece and our present by infusing ancestral impulses and archetypes into the reality of our days.

Rome, early Republic. In a context of great social unrest, the ruling class (the patricians) and the people (the plebs) clash: the people are hungry and demand wheat. At that moment, war is declared against the Volsges. The figure of Gaius Marcius emerges, a noble warrior admired for his extreme valor and courage. His great victory will earn him the nickname Coriolanus.

After the victory, the nobles want to appoint Coriolanus as Consul, but the tribunes of the plebs refuse. The game of politics, lies, deceptions, and strategies begins. Coriolanus, an extremist, decides not to betray himself or his principles. His virulent reaction against the rights of the people will earn him condemnation as a traitor and exile.

Coriolanus joins forces with Aufidius, leader of the Volsges, to destroy Rome. With Rome besieged and close to disaster, Coriolanus's mother, in a memorable scene, persuades her beloved son to desist, because, as Iban Martin says in his podcasts and books about Rome: "The love for a mother is sometimes stronger than the hatred one can feel for an entire city." Aufidius executes Coriolanus, and a temple to female fortune and wisdom is erected in Rome for saving the city.

Recommended age: 12 years and up.
Duration: 1h 55 minutes approx.
Warnings: strobe lights.

This show could be considered the third part of a trilogy consisting of Aeschylus, The Birth and Death of Tragedy and The Gods and God. All three shows revolve around the oral tradition of mythological tales upon which the great Greek tragedies are built. At the same time, all three shows are humorous monologues, where the language and resources of comedy are confronted with the plots of the best-known classical tragedies frequently performed at the Mérida Festival. This blending of tragedy and humor is not foreign to the origin and perennial essence of Greek theater. It is said of Silenus, the demigod who serves as the patron of tragedy and subordinate to Dionysus, the god of tragedy, that when Midas asked him "what was best for man," Silenus replied: "The best thing for man would be never to have been born." To Midas's astonishment, Silenus added: "But don't worry, since you were born, the best thing for you would be to die as soon as possible." This cannot be understood as anything other than a joke suggesting the "absurdity of existence," which is the great leitmotif of all Greek tragedy. It would still be 25 centuries before Valle-Inclán would present this mixture again in his brilliant creation of the grotesque. The blending of genres was always there, showing that dividing lines are a conventional creation, a code, to accommodate the audience's attitude toward the spectacle.

Icons or the Exploration of Destiny is a comedy monologue that reflects on destiny in Greek tragedy. The great iconic figures of Medea, Oedipus, Antigone, and finally Hecuba parade through this show. The exploration of destiny is accompanied by a comparative exposition of this determining force (destiny) in the lives of tragic heroes and also in stories from Hindu mythology, where the concept of karma includes the concept of freedom within the dynamics of destiny.

All these ingredients are interspersed with autobiographical experiences of the author and actor himself, in the form of humorous parodies, with educational elements from the Mérida Classical Theatre Festival's regular repertoire.

Recommended age: 16 years and up.
Duration: 100 minutes

Esperanza cuts a hole in her bedroom wall to access the niche of the goddess Hebe and have secret encounters with her lover, the young Cándido. The slave Rústica, who is in love with the same man, discovers the deception and takes the opportunity to impersonate Esperanza.

Thus, a hole in the wall is the driving force behind this story. A hole through which love and humor, the two essential weapons for breaking down prejudices, seep in.

Recommended age: all audiences.
Duration: approximately 90 minutes.