The director-designer team of Gregory Thompson and Ellen Cairns will helm the trilogy, which is set to run July 15-Aug. 2 at Theater Two of the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College in the Hudson Valley.

Comprised of Agamemnon, Choephori and The Eumenides, Aeschylus' tragedies follow the hereditary curse of the House of Atreus. The staging is part of Bard's 2009 "Wagner and His World" programming theme: Aeschylus' plays served as inspiration for Wagner's Ring Cycle.

"The trilogy sets up a cycle of revenge and retribution and then breaks it," director Gregory Thompson said in a statement. "There are many resonances for today: the cost of waging a foreign war; the debate over the death penalty; suicide bombers; the election of a man committed to justice and the rule of law; etc. The audiences will no doubt make their own connections. Certainly to a Brit it seems a very different play in 2009 than when I was asked to do the play in the summer of 2008 when Bush was still President and people were still being held in Guantánamo Bay without prospect of release."

The works will be presented on separate evenings with marathon performances on Saturdays. Casting for Bard's Oresteia will be announced shortly.

Additional SummerScape programming includes the Giacomo Meyerbee opera Les Huguenots (July 31-Aug. 5), as well as Spiegeltent performances by Justin Bond (July 10), the Wau Wau Sisters (July 17), Amy G (July 18), Taylor Mac (July 24), Cynthia Hopkins and Gloria Deluxe (July 25), Lemon Andersen (July 31), Bindelstiff Family Cirkus (Aug. 1), Eszter Balint (Aug. 7), Ben Robinson (Aug. 8), ETHEL (Aug. 14), Eternal Tango Orchestra (Aug. 15) and A Night in the Old Marketplace (Aug. 21-22). For tickets and further information phone (845) 758-7900 or visit SummerScape.