Perséphone 1968

Synopsis
Artists

Perséphone descends to the Underworld…

…in compassion for the hapless Shades, there to become Pluto’s wife. Springtime accompanies her ascent back to terrestrial life and a second marriage.

(presented on a double-bill with Die Jakobsleiter.)

Music By

Igor Stravinsky

Melodrama in Three Parts By

André Gide

Melodrama in Three Parts

Eumolpus, the priest of Demeter, goddess of summer and harvest, narrates: Demeter has entrusted her daughter, Persephone, goddess of spring, to the care of nymphs.

Playing with her attendant nymphs on the first morning of the world, Persephone sees a narcissus. Despite the warnings of the nymphs, she looks into the chalice of that beautiful flower, and sees therein the people of the Underworld, shades who dwell in eternal night under the reign of Pluto. Her compassion aroused, she plucks the flower, whereupon she places herself in the power of Pluto. Thus, Eumolpus narrates, Pluto seized Persephone from her mother and robbed the earth of spring.

Persephone awakes in the Underworld, surrounded by the shades who dwell without hope forever. She remembers how beautiful the earth was. Now Pluto sends his minions to offer the cup of Lethe, wherein she will forget compassion. The goddess refuses. Instead, she takes a bite of the pomegranate offered by Mercury, and its taste reminds her of the earth she has lost. Looking once more into the chalice of the narcissus, she sees her mother searching for her in the eternal winter that now covers the earth. From Eumolpus she learns that the only hope for new life on earth is in a little boy named Demephon, later to be called Triptolemus, whom the King of Eleusis has offered to Demeter for adoption. In Triptolemus, Persephone sees her husband on earth and knows that she loves him.

Pluto does not hold her back. Persephone returns to the earth, and brings spring again. But, surrounded by love, she cannot forget the poor shades of the Underworld. She accepts as her destiny the role of bringing love and pity to the realm of the dead. Each year, on her return to the Underworld, the grain must die so that it may be reborn. Mercury leads Persephone back to Pluto’s gloomy realm, from which she annually returns to earth, bringing with her the spring.

Synopsis

Melodrama in Three Parts

Artists

Vera Zorina

Vera Zorina

Anastasios Vrenios

Anastasios Vrenios

Clive Thompson

Clive Thompson

James De Bolt

James De Bolt

Robert Baustian

Robert Baustian

Rouben Ter-Arutunian

Rouben Ter-Arutunian

Georg Schreiber

Georg Schreiber

Martin Smith

Martin Smith

Perséphone 1968