Hermione (Gina McCrostie) and her nurse, Aletheia (Alexandra Grasso), sing a duet together. Hermione is so desperate that she wants to commit suicide, now that her plan to kill Andromache and her child has failed, and she fears the return of her husband, Neoptolemus. Her own father, Menelaus, has left her to her fate, apparently–he gave in to the challenge of the old man, Peleus, and has gone back to Sparta.
Lyrics: I wish I could be a dark-winged bird, flying away from Phthia, there where the pinewood hull slipped through the high dark cliffs on the very first sea voyage!
I’ll tear out my hair! I’ll rip my face! Go, pretty kerchief into the sky! May lightning strike me now! I want to leap from the highest rock cliff into the sea, from a forested mountain crag, and join the dead below. Father, you left me, alone on the shore. Where shall I take refuge, what god’s sacred image? Shall I be a slave, fall at the knees of a slave? I wish I could be
a dark-winged bird, flying away from Phthia.