Lyrics adapted and reworked by Frank DiGiacomo and Julian R. Pace from “The Trojan Women by Euripides” by Edith Hamilton, translator, from THREE GREEK PLAYS: Prometheus Bound, Agamemnon, and The Trojan Women, translated by Edith Hamilton.
Copyright © 1937 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., renewed © 1965 by Doris Fielding Reid.
Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
and
from “Helen” by Euripides in THE BACCHAE AND OTHER PLAYS by Euripides, translated by Philip Vellacott (Penguin UK 1954, Revised 1972). Copyright © Philip Vellacott, 1954, 1972.
Reproduced by permission of Penguin Books Ltd.
For the first time, Helen makes her appearance before her husband Menelaus, Queen Hecuba and the other women. She has dressed herself beautifully, her hair and ornaments carefully prepared, in sharp contrast to the tattered rags of proud Hecuba and the others. Her attention is directed at Menelaus, her tone seductive and brazen, as she pleads her innocence and casts the guilt for all that she has caused on others - Paris, Menelaus himself, Hecuba, Priam and even the goddess Aphrodite. Finally she begins to acknowledge that she does not know why she acted as she did, in a plea for some kind of understanding.
Two major excerpts from this extended scene, “Paris! Paris! The hateful one” and “My husband, I have been a slave here” have been combined to make this solo concert aria by Erwin R. Vrooman.
Included in the product offering is a transcription of the orchestration by the Composer to show the richness of the sound palette. The orchestral score for the excerpt listed is available. Contact singdigiacomo@gmail.com with your request.
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LYRICS
(HELEN comes forward with fist clenched.)
HELEN:
Paris! Paris!
The hateful one, the firebrand!
Ah, when he came to me, a mighty Goddess,
a mighty Goddess walked beside him.
No, it is not I who am guilty —
no, it is you, you who are guilty, Menelaus,
not I.
You spread your sails for Crete
and left me alone in your home.
Who, who is it who is guilty?
You, Menelaus, not I!
Guilty, too, she who gave him birth, not I!
Guilty, Priam who decreed that the child should live,
but not I!
Guilty, not I, but Aphrodite:
She who veiled him with her cloak,
blinding my eyes with his beauty,
with his beauty!
And still, it is not all of these,
but myself I ask again and again:
what was there in my heart that I went with him
and forgot my home, my country, my husband?
I cannot answer!
HELEN:
My husband, I have lived a slave here,
a life that has had no joy, no triumph, only bitterness.
Look! Look what a millstone
life has hung around my neck.
From the moment I was born
I have been set apart:
happier those who are not beautiful!
I have been mocked,
mocked cruelly with the gift of life.
Aphrodite, praising of me,
sold me for my beauty.
She, the Goddess of Joy, gave —
and I was her gift.
I was her gift!
From then without respite
sprang anguish of blood and tears and deep despair.
It is my beauty has made me hideous
in the eyes of the world.
(with sincerity and restraint:)
If only the picture could be blotted out
and painted over again,
less beautiful, perhaps, but my own true self:
that all could forget all the bad and remember the good.
Come, maidens, daughters of Earth,
young and light of wing,
come dance with flute and pipe and string.
Bring music for my despair.
Share your tears to suit my sorrow,
sing note with note, pain with my pain;
and if songs of death be sung,
as too soon they all must be,
then hear and accept them, Queen Persephone,
echoes of my own heart’s agony,
offerings to fill my emptiness.