It's from Ovid's Metamorphoses, a Roman mythological epic from the Augustan Age. Echo was a lovely mountain nymph and Narcissus the beautiful youth who loved only himself. He fell in love with his own reflection, according to Ovid.
Echo, a talkative nymph of the forest, has lost the ability to speak for herself (that's another story - she helped Zeus cheat on Hera, who got her own back by cursing Echo to be able only to repeat others' words. There's a full account of the myths, with wonderful illustrations from art, here.
She falls in love with Narcissus - not the first - but is rejected and retreats to the caves, doomed to forever only repeat the words she hears. Narcissus is unable to tear himself away from his own reflection and turns into a flower on the riverbank. (There are several versions of the story - check them out on Wikipedia here. In one, which I prefer, the Goddess Aphrodite had overheard everything and decided to punish Narcissus for his vanity and treatment of Echo with a curse: the next time he saw his reflection in the water, Narcissus would immediately fall in love… with himself.)
Enter Vic Opera. Composer Kevin March and librettist Jane Montgomery Griffiths brought this version to the stage, the music and the libretto designed to mirror and echo the recent experiences of loneliness and helplessness with Covid - 'A new thing born from grief’s dark
ache.'
Echo is Kathryn Radcliffe and Narcissus Nathan Lay, and an extraordinary dimension of the opera is provided by a 'Female Ensemble'. Like 'Cassandra', this opera score was restricted to four musicians, a very different score, lyrical and sometimes ethereal, with the four musicians playing here viola, flute / piccolo / alto flute, harp and percussion. 'March’s finely wrought scoring for violin, flute, harp and percussion was appropriately delicate and enigmatic and often ravishingly beautiful,' said the SMH reviewer.
Like Cassandra, this opera offers, in Director Sam Strong's words, a combination of epic and intimate. "The relationship between the timeless and the timely, the epic and the intimate, has been exquisitely drawn out by the two composer and librettist teams, Simon and Constantine and Kevin and Jane. Both teams bring a human dimension to these mythic stories, creating people we recognise and care about. Yet somehow both operas also retain the poetic qualities of their classical sources, occasionally exploding into delicious flights of lyricism."
Here's Kevin March talking about his process as a composer. And here about his earlier opera Lilies.
And as Melbourne moves to winter, we have the first narcissus flowers... but now they come with delicate and sometimes ravishingly beautiful music.
Lyn, 12 May 2021
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