The Bassarids

About the show

In Thebes, Pentheus tries to suppress the cult of Dionysus, whose followers embrace ecstatic revelry. A stranger—Dionysus in disguise—draws the city into the cult and entrances Pentheus, who goes to the mountain dressed as a woman. Dionysus’s spell reaches Pentheus’s mother Agave and sister Autonoë; Pentheus is torn apart, and Agave unknowingly cradles his head as the city falls.