The Troy trilogy of João de Castro Osório: a nietzschean rewriting of the myth of Helen

Abstract

This production of João de Castro Osório has the high documental value of attesting a unique presence: that of the influence, in the Portuguese theater, of the Nietzsche / Wagner axis, in an ideological context that is expected. He is the single case of dramatic trilogies composition in Portugal. His theatre is marked by a strong component of ultra-romantic rhetoric, what makes this trilogy difficult to be put on stage. The author classifies it as a ‘Dramatic Poem ‘. If the closest motivating happening of its composition was, perhaps, the Colonial War and the defense of the colonies’ maintenance, evoking the glorious past of Portugal, when breaking the seas and conquering distant lands, quickly, throughout the Trilogy of Troy, the author detaches himself from this historical reference to higher flights, in his aesthetic imaginary concerning the myth of Troy and its epic Homeric treatment. In the three plays – Helena, Aquiles, Apoteose - the evolution of the action arrives to an unexpected end: the loving pair Achilles and Helen goes higher and higher through the flames of Troy acropolis, until an apotheosis: Gods of fear are defeated by the heroes, in whom the truly Divinity inhabits – so, heroic man is too great to be destroyed. Death and Life are the two faces of the same reality: Immortality.