Princess, sorceress, child-murderer - Medea is a goldmine for dramatists and composers. As a new production of Handel's Teseo tours, Andrew Huth unmasks an exotic myth

[The Guardian, 19 October 2007]

"Nothing that's grim, nothing that's Greek. She plays Medea later this week," they sing at the beginning of Stephen Sondheim's A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. And they don't come much grimmer than Medea, who leaves a trail of havoc through a whole series of Greek myths. Myths recounted by Greeks, that is, for the whole point of Medea is that she's not Greek at all. She's an exotic, a sorceress from a mysterious land at the very edge of the world.