King Priam Priam to be killed by Neoptolemus, Achilles' son. Troy is in ruins. Priam refuses to leave his city, and one by one his family leaves him. His last farewell is with Helen, to whom he speaks gently. There is a moment of stillness before Achilles' son appears to strike the killing blow and Hermes, the drama over, departs for Olympus. King Priam King Priam is an opera by Michael Tippett, to his own libretto. The story is based on Homer's "Iliad", except the birth and childhood of Paris, which are taken from the "Fabulae" of Hyginus. The premiere was on
Troy: Fall of a City Sunday Times", panned the show, writing, ""Troy: Fall of a City", a reworking of the oldest drive-by in history, is so far removed from anything Sophocles might recognize, they should have named it "The Real Housewives of Ilium"." In a 24 February review for "The Spectator", James Walton dismissed the script as "pitched somewhere between a particularly corny Hollywood epic and a play by Ernie Wise", while the dialogue was pronounced "staggeringly creaky and endlessly bathetic." Walton goes on: "‘How did you two get together?’ Paris asked Helen and Menelaus at the banquet given in his honour. [...] Impressively, the