Greek Drama

High on a mountainside above the Tyrrenian Sea, lies the town of Taormina, Sicily.  Four hundred years after the Greeks first colonized Sicily, they settled here.

The entire town is perched precariously on cliffs that seem to hang over the sea.  Taormina was a pleasant backwater for centuries until 902AD.  That year Byzantine Siracusa fell to the Ottoman Turks…and Taormina became the capital of Greek Sicily.

But long before Taormina became an government center, people flocked to this aerie of a town for this….

…Greek theater.  The setting of the theater is breathtaking.  Like everything else in town, it hangs out over a cliff with the sea and Mt. Etna in the background.  

Aescylus, Sophocles and Euripides all had their plays performed here in antiquity.  In fact, Greek dramas and tragedies have graced this stage for 2,400 years.  

Back then, the stars of Greek drama didn’t have their name on the marquee.  Instead, the bust of a Greek goddess at the entrance of the theater had to suffice.

The writing on this clay tablet is not the playbill for the night’s performance.  It’s a prayer to the gods for a successful performance.

When the Romans conquered Sicily, they kept the theater and made some improvements.  The Greeks did not know how to build with bricks and mortar.  That was a Roman invention…as was this arch that separated the back of the theater from the lobby.

The amphitheater in which the stage sits is huge...

…capable of seating well over a thousand people.  

What made this theater special is….

…when an actor stands center-stage, she can be heard in every seat in the house…even when she whispers!  This is one of the few theaters in the world where the acoustics are perfect, and it’s outside!

So ideal are the conditions, the world’s best actors have flocked to this theater for decades.  In the 1960’s, Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck performed here.  In the 1970’s, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.  Sophia Loren and Claudia Cardinale have performed here.  

The best of Italian film directors…Fredrico Fellini and Vittorio De Sica…switched media and staged performances, both ancient and modern, in this theater.

In fact, most years there are four operas, ballet performances such as American Ballet Theater and New York Ballet; musical guests such as Bruce Sprinstein, Sting, or Santana.  Not bad for a little Greek town tucked into the hills of Sicily.