Philomela (2004)
(Opera in Five Acts)

The tragedy is inspired the myth which explains the nightingale's mournful song (elegos a mourning song): the nightingale was originally a woman who killed her own child. Tereus was the king of Thrace who married Procne, the daughter of an Athenian king. After several years of marriage, which included the birth of their son Itys, Procne wanted to see her sister, Philomela. Tereus went to Athens to collect her, but on the return journey he raped Philomela and cut her tongue out to prevent her speaking the truth. However, Philomela was able to reveal the truth through a piece of weaving: ‘the voice of the loom’ (fr. 595 Radt). The sisters took a sinister revenge on Tereus. Procne killed Itys and fed him to Tereus. When he realised what had happened, he intended to kill the two women. But the gods intervened and changed all three into birds. The play itself must have covered the events after the return from Athens up to the metamorphoses. The story is well known from later poets and mythographers, but these sources are problematic when trying to recover the plot of this lost play. The longest surviving fragment is Procne's bitter comment about the position of women in relation to the institution of marriage.