Alcesta – with English subtitles

What would happen if one day the gods decided you had to die? What would happen if the gods also decided that you could be spared death, if someone volunteered to die in your place? Who should and who would offer to die in your place? What would you do with your saved life?

Euripides wrote Alcesta in 438 BC, at the twilight of Athenian democracy. In his plays, the law of the gods is not just, it is the source of inner struggle. Alcesta’s story is about people, though the gods complicate it. A tragedy about Admet, king in Phera, and his beautiful wife, Alcesta, whose love has angered the gods and now they must submit to punishment. But, as nothing in life remains suspended in the tragic, a hero emerges in this story who will attempt the impossible.