Author of the Text Ovídeo
Title of Poem or Text Fasti IV - estrofes 425-620
Title of Book or Collection Fasti
Year 2000
Text Scene 1
Over here, friends. Let us return with the lapful of flowers.
Oh, dearest mother, I am being taken.
Scene 2
Ah! My daughter, where are you?
Persephone! Daughter!
Did any girl pass this way?
Parrhasian stars, you can know everything
since you never sink beneath ocean's stream,
show this wretched parent her daughter, Persephone
Scene 3
If you remember who fathered Proserpina,
half this anxiety should be yours.
Persephone did not deserve a bandit husband.
No son-in-law is acquired this way
Let him go unpunished,
if he returns her and repairs the past
He’s not a shameful son-in-law.
But if your heart will not alter and you resolve
to burst the bonds of contracted marriage,
let us also test whether she maintained her fast.
If not, she is her husband’s wife in hell.
The ravished girl broke her fast with three seeds
buried in a pomegranate’s tough rind
Heaven is not my home either
order the Taenarian dell to admit me too
And she would have done this, if Jove had not arranged
that the daughter spend six months in heaven
The piece is divided in three scenes; the transition between scenes is made through the use by the singer of different stage lighting and props. In the score I suggest that Persephone should use a flower crown made of marigolds, her mother (Ceres) should wear the same flower crown on her arm as a bracelet, and the narrator should not wear the flowers, instead they should be put next to her on the floor.
In the first scene Persephone plays joyfully with her friends, picking up flowers, but is then kidnapped. In the second scene Ceres, mother of Persephone, searches for her daughter. In the third scene, the narrator revels to Ceres who kidnapped Persephone (her uncle) and where she can find her (in the underworld).
The text used in Solos IV was taken from “Fasti”, Ovid, translated and edited by Boyle, A. J., e Woodard, R. D., Penguin Books, 2000, Fasti IV stanzas 425-620).
