Page 18 - Programme

Opera Interactively Into Schools 18

Composer’s This work, La belle Hélène (The Beautiful Helen), is a
blend of two musical ventures: Offenbach’s old and
note popular comic operetta on the one hand and a new
opera –or perhaps a music theatre work that carries
inside it fragments of the past– on the other.

This relationship between the familiar and the unfamiliar,
the old and the new, is in every way dominant both
in the work’s structure and in its content. The eight
singers are at times heroes –or, as we say, roles– and at
times members of a choir that talks incessantly, makes
exclamations, says words and phrases in unison, or
whistles indifferently. The orchestra in turn is at times
a vehicle for musical accompaniment and at times a
sound production factory marking the change of the
times of the year or of the settings in which the story
unfolds. Writing this work I tried to develop the material
from the original opera at my disposal in ways that are
relevant to me and without showing the transition from
the old to the new. I also wanted to create a music world
that derides and competes with the stereotypes of the
genre perceived by music-loving audiences as opera.
The story is simple: A queen that gets bored in Sparta.
Women and men who are obliged to meet the stereotypes
handed down to them. An intellectual tournament for famous
Greeks who, as it seems, invest –always in 1194– in heroism,
chiselled abs and other such virtues. A prince from Troy –or
perhaps a woman dressed as a prince, or a prince singing in
high-pitched voice?– seduces the bored queen and abducts
her with the help of goddess Aphrodite. Some people protest
about the loose morals and the unprecedented happenings,
while others protest about the conservatism and the
anachronisms. They all sing for more than one hour and in
the end, the story, despite being inaccurate in comparison
to the things we know, turns out to be perhaps much more
real than what we would expect, while the opera, despite
being unfamiliar to us, turns out to be perhaps –I hope–
as attractive and interesting as the music we are used to
listening to.

— Kornilios Selamsis