La Belle Hélène

Operetta by Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880)

Synopsis by Agathe Mélinand

Act 1. Sparta.

The feast of Adonis is being prepared. The people are laying offerings on the altar, but Calchas, the Grand Augur, is disappointed at this cart-load of flowers. He would like oxen and sheep for Jupiter, who is in one of his moods! Meanwhile Venus well, since that Mount Ida affair !... 'Venus's augur will be doing big business'. Enter Helen of Sparta, with women mourning Adonis. On this day, the anniversary of the beautiful young man's death, they implore Venus: 'We must have love. Love is dying! Love is dead.'

Alone with Calchas, Helen confides in him: she is obsessed with the Mount Ida story, and the shepherd, Paris. Didn't Venus promise him the love of the most beautiful woman in the world? And the most beautiful woman in the world... could that be any other than she? Ah, Fatel. That Fate which burdens her and prevents her from having a peaceful bourgeois life with Menelaus! Calchas gets rid of Helen just as her 'darling nephew' Orestes enters. Accompanied by two girls who are no better than they should be, he tells us of his steamy time yesterday evening. Calchas sends him packing he has 'an urgent sacrifice...' and can't risk the scandal if the jolly trio should be heard inside the temple. What would people say ?

Alone at last, Calchas is getting ready for the sacrifice when in comes a shepherd who speaks of Venus, and a letter... and lo! 'Up there, in the blue sky- that little spot which is getting bigger and bigger' is a carrier-pigeon laden with a letter. Venus writes to Calchas, commanding that Paris must meet Helen. The amazed augur recognises King Priam's son, who has seen the goddess. The High Priest cannot resist, he asks for 'a bit of an idea'. Paris replies: 'Listen to the story!'

Helen now appears and is obviously smitten at first glance with this handsome shepherd. The meeting is cut short, for the festival is beginning. Enter the Kings of Greece, organisers of, and participants in, a 'day of intelligence'. In search of a strong intellect among those who are just strong, we meet the two Ajaxes, the ebullient Achilles, Menelaus and the bearded King Agamemnon. A charade and a rhyming game are both won by the shepherd, the outright winner of the contest. He reveals who and what he is: 'the chap with the apple', who is crowned by a weak-kneed Helen, whilst Menelaus invites him to dinner. At seven, Helen specifies: 'We eat at seven...'. Paris wants to get her on her own. Calchas fixes it. A fake thunderclap and an improvised prophecy send King Menelaus off 'to spend a month in the mountains of Crete'. The entire court joins in the divine decree: 'Go on, may you arrive, Menelaus, at that distant land where, alas! the voice of destiny leads you!'

Act 2. Helen's quarters.

Her attendants show her some marvellous gowns for the grand soirrée for the kings. Marvellous, but revealing. Helen declines them: she would like something to 'hide my grace and beauty' so as to make it easier to resist falling in love with Paris. Better still, when he is announced, she tells her attendant Bacchis to ask him to wait, and retires for a moment to contemplate the portrait of her parents. After an invocation to Venus, who delights in 'bringing about the downfall of virtue'. Helen feels better and has Paris shown in. When she resists him, despite his attempts at the two usual ways of seducing a woman, he leaves her, promising her there's a Third Way: 'by cunning'. The Kings enter, engrossed in their favourite pastime, the Great Goose Game, in the course of which Calchas is caught with his hand in the till: 'The Grand Augur is cheating'.

The desperate Helen has had the number of slaves guarding her chamber doubled. She asks Calchas for a private audience. She will not go to the dinner: she fears her own weakness and is afraid of seeing Paris again. Only solitude and sleep will be her allies. She asks Calchas for a dream, 'a sweet dream in which I see him, this Paris I'm running away from, this Paris I adore'. The queen falls asleep, a slave enters the chamber; it is Paris in disguise. since it's 'Fate', Calchas leaves him alone, taking Bacchis to dinner.

Enchanted by Helen, Paris quivers with passion, and when the beauty awakens and sees him she thinks she is still dreaming - the dream which Calchas promised her... The love duet which follow is not taboo, because 'it's only a dream'! Alas, Menelaus, returning inopportunely from Crete, interrupts the sweet dream of love and, mad with rage, has the other kings brought in. In vain do they tell him a husband just doesn't come back home without warning; he won't listen. To calm him down, Agamemnon sends 'the vile seducer' back to Troy. But Paris threatens to come back, since 'Every shepherd must have his day'.

Act 3. A beach at Nauplia.

Venus has had her revenge putting the people of Greece in the grip of an erotic mania. 'Husbands are leaving their wives, wives are leaving their husbands' and those who do not agree can only go off to Leucadia and throw themselves over a cliff. Agamemnon and Calchas, embarrassed and freezing in their bathing costumes, are devastated. Enter Helen. She had come to this beach 'out of season' to look for peace and has grown heartily sick of the question Menelaus continually asks: why did she say 'it was only a dream ? Helen issues a threat of something even worse: 'I'll make you cry over the real thing ' Agamemnon and Calchas, seeing that Menelaus, gives not a fig for his country's woes', say he should forget about being a husband and attend to being a king. The orgy must be stopped, Menelaus must 'sacrifice himself' and give up his wife, humbly accepting the decree of the gods. Menelaus refuses; he has a better idea. Despite Calchas's tantrums, he announces the arrival of a parallel augur, the Grand Augur of Venus, who is from Cythera. The disguised Paris (for it is he!) now puts in to shore unrecognised, aboard a flower-decked galley. He first demands some jollity in their reception, then the sacrifice of a hundred white heifers, and finally the departure of Helen on a little voyage 'to a very pretty little island... Cythera!' Menelaus agrees: it's not much to ask. Helen recognises Paris, she 'resists', and only finally goes on board the galley which 'is leaving for Cythera' when everyone says she must.

Once away from the shore, the Grand Augur reveals his identity. It is Paris; he is carrying Helen off. Now she is his.

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