Credits
PERFORMING ARTISTS
John Findon
Tenor
English National Opera Orchestra
Orchestra
Martyn Brabbins
Conductor
COMPOSITION & LYRICS
Havergal Brian
Composer
Αισχύλοςx
Librettist
PRODUCTION & ENGINEERING
Simon Perry
Executive Producer
Alexander Van Ingen
Producer
Dave Rowell
Recording Engineer
Lyrics
First, Argos, hail! And ye, my country’s gods,
Who worked my safe return, and nerved my arm
With vengeance against Priam! For the gods,
Taught by no glozing tongue, but by the sight
Of their own eyes knew justice; voting ruin
And men-destroying death to ancient Troy,
Their fatal pebbles in the bloody urn
Not doubtingly they dropt; the other vase,
Unfed with hope of suffrage-bearing hand,
Stood empty. Now the captured city’s smoke
Points where it fell. Raves Ruin’s storm; the winds
With crumbled dust and dissipated gold
Float grossly laden. To the immortal gods
These thanks, fraught with rich mem’ry of much good,
We pay; they taught our hands to spread the net
With anger-whetted wit, a woman’s frailty
Laid bare old Ilium to the Argive bite,
And with the setting Pleiads outleapt a birth
Of strong shield-bearers from the fateful horse.
A fierce flesh-tearing lion leapt their walls,
And licked a surfeit of tyrannic blood.
This prelude to the gods. As for thy words
Of friendly welcome, I return thy greeting,
And as your thought, so mine; for few are gifted
With such rich store of love, to see a friend
Preferred and feel no envy;
They who seemed most my friends
were but the mirrored show, substanceless.
Ulysses only, most averse to sail,
Was still most ready in the yoke with me
To bear the harness; living now or dead,
This praise I frankly give him. For the rest,
The city and the gods, we will take counsel
In full assembly freely. What is good
We will give heed that it be lasting; where
Disease the cutting or the caustic cure
Demands, we will apply it. I, meanwhile,
My hearth and home salute, and greet the gods,
Who, as they sent me to the distant fray,
Have brought me safely back. Fair victory,
Once mine, may she dwell with me evermore!
Written by: Havergal Brian, Αισχύλοςx
