Oedipus Rex

King Oedipus, seeking to end the plague ravaging Thebes, discovers that the murderer he hunts is himself, that he has unwittingly killed his father and married his mother, fulfilling the prophecy he spent his life trying to escape. Stravinsky's opera-oratorio, sung in Latin with a narrator speaking in the vernacular, strips Sophocles' tragedy to its ritualistic essence, creating a work of monumental severity and devastating dramatic power.