Igor Stravinsky. Persephone
The Royal Theatre in Madrid presented the ancient Greek myth of Persephone in a magnificent production by Peter Sellars.
Persephone is a melodrama for speaker, solo singers, chorus, dancers and orchestra, with music by Igor Stravinsky and libretto by André Gide. The opera is based on the ancient myth of Persephone and the hymn to Demeter attributed to Homer, composed in Attica in the 6th century BC.
It was first performed under the direction of the composer at the Paris Opera on April 30, 1934, in a double role with the ballet Diane de Poitiers by Jacques Ibert. The premiere was staged by the Ida Rubinstein Ballet Company, with Rubinstein herself dancing and performing the role of Persephone, and tenor René Maison singing Eumolphe.
Persephone frolics and dances with her nymph friends in a meadow. She inhales the scent of a fragrant narcissus, and immediately a vision of an unknown world of wandering ghosts and "many shadows living without any hope, sad, mournful and immensely sad" appears before her.
Pictures of Hell, symbolizing human suffering, cause her great shock. Persephone descends there to ease the fate of the doomed. She refuses to drink water from Lethe, to accept the crown and gifts of Pluto, but agrees to taste the pomegranate fruit offered by Mercury, since the pomegranate symbolizes the joy of life. At the call of the farmer Triptolemus, Persephone returns to the earth, where drought and crop failure rage without her. But she has learned "what is hidden in the shadows and invisible in the light of day."
Her soul experiences a feeling of pity and mercy. She decides to "descend to the very bottom of human suffering" because she is haunted by the hopelessly suffering ghosts of hell. She returns to them of her own free will, out of love and pity, to ease their lot.
PERFORMERS:
Persephone - Dominique Blanc
Eumolpus - Paul Groves
Ballet soloists:
Persephone - Sam Satya
Demeter - Chumwan Sodhacivi
Pluto - Khon Chansitika
Mercury - Nam Narim
Soloists of the Kohara Children's Choir
Chorus and Orchestra of the Royal Theatre
Conductor - Teodor Currentzis
Director - Peter Sellars
Royal Opera, Madrid, 2012