ABSTRACT
Euripides' Medea became better known in Germany as the eighteenth century advanced and Medea's inner conflict over the fate of her children in the fifth epeisodion was to become the foundation for Gotter's recasting of the material to make the tragedy of the suffering mother his work's central focus. Lacking a metropolitan culture, Germany, on the threshold of the eighteenth century, looked to Paris and, as far as the figure of Medea is concerned, specifically to Pierre Corneille's adaptation of Seneca. The first sympathetic portrayal of Medea on the eighteenth-century German stage was a ballet first performed in Stuttgart in 1763, with choreography by Jean Georges Noverre and music by Jean Joseph Rodolphe. Ironically, Medea's progress from a divided self, unified only by her passion for Jason, to a wholeness that will bring about her death is set against a regressive depiction of society.
