Although B always kept away from classical Greek drama, there is one exception: Euripides’ The Bacchae. His interest in this play, of all the ancient plays the one closest to the roots of drama, can be traced back to the 1950s. Two planned productions of it, one in 1954, the other in 1987, were cancelled. But in 1991 B finally staged it as music drama at the Royal Opera in Stockholm, with a score by Swedish composer Daniel Börtz. Two years later a TV version of this production was broadcast in Sweden. And in 1996 B's stage version of The Bacchae opened at Dramaten.

Ever since The Silence, originally called “God's Silence,” B claimed that he had lost his earlier belief in God. Whatever mercy may be found in this life is not divine but human. The only love that exists is the love we offer to and receive from one another. His handling of The Bacchae expressed this conviction. The enduring discussion whether Euripides sides with Pentheus or Dionysus B solved by siding with neither of them. In the struggle between them mankind, represented primarily by Pentheus’ mother Agave, is sacrificed. In her shape, humanity became the heroic victim in all three productions.

The Bacchae is based on the mythological story of King Pentheus of Thebes who is punished by the god Dionysus for refusing to worship him. “In this play,” B says in the opera program, Euripides “makes a clean sweep with the gods of power and the power of gods. He contrasts the holiness and exposure of man with the atrocity and bloodthirstiness of the Superiors.” This (contestable) interpretation of The Bacchae was fundamental to B's three productions of it. “What we are going to witness,” B writes in the opera program (Euripides, 1991: 5f.), “is the frightening final phase of a divine revenge planned for a considerable time.” And he continues: