Music: Egyptian Helen

• Share

(See front cover)

A Grecian blonde once made tall trouble and men have never forgotten. Long before Christ they knew her as the fairest of all women, the one the Trojan Paris stole, for whom the Greeks fought ten long years. Brave warriors died for Helen. Brave poets since have spent their dearest words on her. She has been Menelaus' Helen, Paris' Helen; Homer's Helen, too, and the Helen of Herodotus, Euripides, of Kit Marlowe, Alexander Pope, Andrew Lang. Recently John Erskine, perspicacious professor at Columbia University, won fame with his Helen refurbished. Last week and for the first time, still proud, still beautiful, she came to the Metropolitan Opera House, Manhattan—this time the Helen of Composer Richard Strauss, given new being by Singer Maria Jeritza.

The Story. Hugo von Hofmannsthal* did the text for Strauss' Helen and laid the scene in Egypt. Helen and Menelaus are headed home. Troy has fallen. Hector and Achilles are dead. So is the graceful Paris, and by the same curved sword Helen too must die as an atonement to the Greeks. A sorceress learned all this from Muschel, a psychic shell which reported in a bold contralto a vision of Menelaus stealing hugger-mugger into the ship's hold, knife ready. Aithra, the sorceress, had strange powers. Just then she managed a mighty storm to stay the murderer's hand. She blew their ship to bits, dipped them together deep into the sea and brought them up finally on her own Egyptian shore. Aithra was glad to have a wily hand in Helen's history. And so began as confused a mass of supernatural detail as ever bewildered an operatic audience.

To kill or not to kill—Menelaus was distracted. Out came his knife and Helen smiled as poets have had her smile, until, hypnotized, he dropped it. But smiling might not always save her and Aithra mixed a potion that would bring forgetfulness and safety. Menelaus drank and Helen became for him a phantom he could love, one who had never sinned against him and his countrymen. He was happy for a moment, would start at once for home but Helen had her qualms. She remembered. So did all Greeks and again she appealed to Aithra and again Aithra made magic, spirited them away to a lonely palm grove at the foot of Atlas.

There Menelaus woke, distracted still. Helen was pure, but just a shadow Helen. The real one he had killed, just as he killed Paris, just as he would kill anyone who dared rest his eyes on her. Death, Helen decided, was better than a half-mad Menelaus who thought her just a shadow creature, and perhaps death would not come so long as she could smile. Packed away there was another potion that might restore him. Aithra warned her but she took no notice, clapped for wine and balsam and herself brewed the cup of quietude that proved to be remembrance and pathway to a happy ending.

The Performance. Laymen seeing it for the first time could make little of the plot and all its sundry subplots. They reduced it to its lowest common denominator: a story of reconciliation wherein the principles begin safe journey to Greece.