"The Marbles"

An opera in two acts and two songs

Book and libretto by Samuel Ross Gilbert

(1) A naked and pale male figure appears at center
stage with the rising sun. As he sings we learn that
he is Dionysus, the pedimental figure from the east
side of the Parthenon. His aria is a paean to a savior
whose imminent coming will liberate him from his 2,200
year imprisonment.

(2) Morning on the Acropolis. A British couple, an
Italian painter, a hunchback, a team of Greek workers.
Huge carved blocks are being wrestled from the
Parthenon frieze. The couple, we learn, are the Earl
of Elgin, ambassador to Constantinople, and his
frivolous wife Mary. While Elgin sings of his plans to
improve British taste through these fifth-century-BC
masterpieces, Mary talks of her health, how sick she
was on the crossing, etc.

(3) Evening in London. Elgin, his health devastated,
is divorcing his faithless wife. He has ruined himself
with the taste-improvement enterprise. His nose has
come off, erased by some Turkish bug. He visits the
temporary hall where his loot is housed, and despite
the praise of ghastly figures--Canova, Visconti,
Hayson, West, Fuseli--he can only hear the lasting
curses of Byron, champion of the modern Greek.

(4) Dionysus reappears, sings a plaintive ode to the
Thames and hints of another savior to come.