Lyrics by Federico Garcia Lorca, from FIVE PLAYS, Copyright © 1983 by New Directions Publishing Corp.
Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
At the opening of Act Two, Witchbeetle comes out of her cave and warns Boybeetle of his danger in loving the wounded Butterfly. Drawing a magic circle with her stick, she says “If you fall in love with her, alas for you! You’ll die! Think on this...” Boybeetle rhapsodizes about his confused loves, and falls to weeping.
The aria was first performed by Gayle Ross, accompanied by Frank DiGiacomo at DiGiacomo in Concert, May 28,1975 at the Everson Museum of Art, in Syracuse, New York.
The Lament is available as a downloadable Sheet Music PDF, a live performance MP3, a piano-only MP3 rendering of the sheet music for rehearsal purposes and a synth voice and piano MP3.
A photograph from the production of The Butterfly’s Evil Spell - produced by Our Endeavors Theater Collective; April 2000. Design by Scott Osborne.
See www.scottosbornedesign.com for more information about the artist.
LYRICS
Boybeetle:
What skein of loves has the wind knit here for me!
Why fades now the flow’r of my innocence,
while another flow’r is born within, is born within my imaginings?
Who can she be, who comes to rob me of my good venture
with shaken wings, white as ermine?
Oh who can she be, who comes with shaken wings
to rob me of my innocence?
I turn to sorrow, upon the dark nighttime,
and call to my mother, as a child I called.
Oh Scarlet Poppy, who o’er all the meadow gaze,
would that I were as lovely as you!
Oh comfort the sorrows of the lover, lovesick.
Ah! Ah! weeping for the dew of daybreak.