LA BELLE HÉLÈNE

All aboard

During the Overture a middle class petit bourgeois couple from the mid 1960’s, later seen as Hélène and Ménélas, are boarding a cruise ship.
Ménélas, more interested in buying cheap antique male statuary reproductions, is clearly neglecting his wife. Frankly frustrated his wife is hit on the head by a plaster statue of Adonis. She dreams that she is La Belle Hélène, the most seductive woman in the antique Greece.