Sappho of Lesbos
Original story and libretto by
Ben and Nancy Freedman
Women's chorus with some small solo parts
Men's chorus
2 Flutes
SYNOPSIS
SCENE I
Drawn by the disturbance, Sappho appears at a draped archway. She is not perturbed by Aesop's vision, and invites the old story teller to join the festivities. It is graduation day for her students who come to her to be instructed in dance, song and the mysteries of Dionysos.
A drape is drawn to reveal the great hall which supple girls are decorating with garlands of flowers. They dance and sing immortal lines from Sappho's poems, each girl in turn kneeling before Sappho asking, "What is woman?" To each Sappho gives a different reply meant for the ears of Aesop: "Woman is the warrior's reward, the adoring wife, ..." Once the old man leaves, the dance becomes an orgy. Sappho's replies arenow quite different. "Woman is more than a warrior's toy, more than man's servant ... "
The light fades. Niobe, foremost among the slaves, lights a taper. Three of Sappho's pupils bring a statue of Apollo and continue their dance to him. Inviting him to join them, they climb enticingly onto his lap simulating intercourse.
Sappho gives each girl a prize for her outstanding talent. One is nimble, another full of grace, and yet another velvet throated. When Doricha, the White Rose, kneels before her, Sappho withholds the prize, demanding instead that the girl clear herself of a charge of stealing.
Brother Khar appears from his place of concealment behind the drape. Dorcha has found her champion. Quarreling with his sister, he takes the White Rose with him. The girls clamor for fair Sappho to award the grand prize. Sappho has long known who it is she will choose -- Gongyla, bosom friend of Sappho's own daughter, Kleis. Sappho breaks into the circle of girls and detaches Gongyla from her daughter's arms, singing, "I long and I yearn."
SCENE II
Sappho enters and takes a seat at her makeup table, commanding Niobe to make her beautiful. Looking into her copper mirror produces a burst of fury. She strikes Niobe. "That is for making me old." She strikes her again. "And that is for making me ugly.
Niobe tries once more, and suggests candlelight. Sappho begs her beloved servant to forgive her. She is ready to welcome her new friend. But Gongyla is late. Sappho, uncertain of her own dwindling power to attract love, sings a prayer to the Kyprian goddess, foam-born Aphrodite.
A small scratching sound at the door. It is not Gonglya, but Doricha who has brought a peace-making gift: herself, with her trained peacock.
A large screen projects in shadow an enormous bird, who, with beating wings, seizes the diminutive Doricha in his talons and carries her, heels dragging the floor as she struggles in his grasp. He drops her to the couch and positions himself above her. As he comes down, the orchestra screams, the girl screams and the bird screams.
Khar rushes in, furious at his sister. He pulls Doricha after him as he strides out. Sappho throws herself on the bed and is weeping when Gongyla steals in. She assumes Sappho's distress is because she has kept her waiting. "I stopped to pick a flower for you," she sings, and goes on to say she is on her way to Kleis, Sappho's daughter, to celebrate winning the grand prize.
Sappho's wiles are now tested. "Let me prepare you for such a gala meeting." She plies the girl with sweet Lesbian wine, rubs her with priceless unguents and murmuring sweet words gently urges her against soft cushions. As the girl becomes drowsy, she begins to remove items of clothing. Each garment she replaces with a jewel, then kisses the ornamented spot.
She does not hear Kleis, who has come looking for her friend. Kleis is stunned by what she sees and lays a daughter's deepest curse upon her mother. Gongyla crumples to the ground. Sappho is as one turned to stone.
SCENE III
The people in the town square take up the lament. Aesop advises them to go home and lock their doors. "Can you lock out plague?" they chant back. "Sing woe! Sing woe!
SCENE IV
Erinna seizes on this and wrings from Sappho a promise that she will give Gongyla up. Sappho swears by the Ever-living One, the Kyprian herself.
Erinna then asks Sappho to kiss her. Even before she finishes speaking blood gushes over her face. Sappho draws back in horror. Then looks more closely, the girl is dead.
Sappho steps from her bath to receive a towel from the hand of Gongyla, who urges her to rouse herself from Erinna's death. She sings to encourage her, "The gods gave us each day fresh."
Soothed, Sappho settles back when she beholds a light that as she watches transforms itself into Erinna. The apparition has come to see that she redeem her promise. But she cannot do it. She cannot give up her love.
Erinna sings: Do not betray me twice. Sappho replies in despair, "I would I were dead."
Gongyla: "You did not like my little song?"
In answer Sappho replies: Erinna is dead. My brother I have driven from my side. My daughter, I am told, has gone to the priestesses of the cave to live with snakes. And you whom I loved, I love no more. Go to Niobe, she will show you my woman's box of jewels. Take what you please and leave my house." Gongyla backs slowly away.
Sappho speaks to the empty room. "Are you satisfied, Erinna?" There is a scream in the darkness. Gongyla's feet are seen dangling from the lintel.
BLACKOUT
Sappho tells her slave to take what she wants, including her most precious possession, her lyre. "Also your freedom. I give you that too."
Niobe does not want these things, nor her freedom. She wants only to follow where her mistress goes. Sappho relents. They will travel together aboard her black ships. And she sings the legend of the island of Leucas, where truth-telling Apollo gazes from his shrine atop the highest peak. Prisoners were commanded to jump into the sea without fear. If they were innocent, Apollo's birds would fly to their aid and lift them to safety. If guilty they would be dashed upon the rocks below. Niobe is appalled.
SCENE VI
Sappho walks to the edge. The birds come in and circle over her head. Holding out her arms to them Sappho takes an upward step before falling into blackness and disappearing from view. The birds continue to circle.
THE END
Many lurid details of her life, recounted in legends, have been mined by poets and moralists alike, although only a few of her verses survive. Nancy Freedman makes good use of these fragments to produce a credible approximation of a poet's creative process. She also leaves out few of the legends, placing Sappho squarely within the glittering and violent world of the ancient Greek Mediterranean. While some of the characters are thinly drawn, Freedman creates a vivid portrait of the book's central figure, who apparently achieved a degree of personal success and independence unknown to any other woman in her age -- and few in this.
Sappho
Dramatic soprano
Kleis
High soprano
Doricha
Soprano
Gongyla
Mezzo soprano
Erinna
Mezzo soprano
Niobe
Contralto
Kharaxos
Baritone
Aesop
Tenor
Orchestra:
2 Oboes
2 Clarinets in B-flat
Bass Clarinet in B-flat
2 Bassoons
4 French Horns in F
3 Trumpets
3 Trombones
Tympani
Percussion
Strings
In 6th Century BC Greece, Sappho of Lesbos was celebrated as poet, singer, and the first fighter for the rights of women in the Western world.
Rapping at the massive but delicately carved doors to her mansion, demanding entry, is Aesop of Samos, famed fabulist and myth-maker. He is greeted by Sappho'as brother Kharaxos, a wealthy ship-owner and trader. Aesop insists on speaking to Sappho. He has come with a warning of death.
Niobe, with the help of a novice slave-girl, prepares Sappho's bungalow for a night of love. "The pillows," she instructs, "must be sprinkled lightly with attar of roses ... ". The novice catches her breath in delight and slips something beneath the pillow, the testicle of a bull, "that great Sappho's lover of the evening will find renewed manhood." To which Niobe replies indignantly that it is not a man for whom they have so diligently prepared the bedchamber. "No man visits the songbird of Lesbos." To explain, Niobe sings her the fable of the three sexes and how Zeus split them down the middle to form heterosexuals and homosexuals, male and female.
Plague has struck the city. Gongyla confides to a friend, Erinna, that it is her fault. And she tells of Kleis' curse. Erinna consoles her saying she too in her time came under the spell of the enchantress, Sappho.
Erinna reclines on her sickbed. Sappho, who loves her still, kneels beside her and holds her hand. She sings how she will make her well with strengthening broths and eggs of duck and peahen. But Erinna knows she is dying. Sappho cannot bear to lose her, she begs forgiveness for following after every comely form. "In my heart it was always you."
Sappho runs distractedly about her bedchamber. She is dressed for travel. Pulling coan dresses, shawls and scarves from neat piles she loads them into Niobe's arms.
Niobe is climbing. She has lost sight of Sappho, who is far ahead along the steep path. As she climbs her lovely girls climb with her. Sappho pauses to speak to each in turn, to hug them, to kiss. Before reaching the top she pauses to pick flowers. The god, cast in stone, waits for her at the top. She lays the small bouquet at his feet.
This opera was inspired by Sappho: The Tenth Muse by Nancy Freedman (St. Martin's Press). Below is the New York Times review of the book, dated October 4, 1998, by Gloria Rohmann:
Even during her lifetime, in the sixth century B.C., Sappho was the West's most famous woman poet. (Plato later called her ''the tenth muse.'') An aristocrat born on the Aegean island of Lesbos, she was sent into exile for conspiring against the tyrant Pittakos. After a fortunate marriage (and early widowhood), she returned to Lesbos in triumph and founded an academy for young women, to whom her lyric love poems may have been addressed.