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Search - Bluebeard - A Musical Fantasy

Bluebeard A Musical Fantasy
Author: Kate Douglas Wiggin

Text extracted from opening pages of book: BLUEBEARD A MUSICAL FANTASY BY KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN HEREIN LIBS THE STORY OF TEE MIRACULOUS DISCOVERY IN A HAT BOX OF AN UNPUBLISHED OPERA BY THE LATE RICHARD WAGNER, DEAL ING IN THE MOST UNIQUE AND CLIMACTERIC MANNER WITH FEMINISM, TRIAL MARRIAGE, BIGAMY AND POLYGAMY; ITS LIBRETTO AND LETT-MOTIVE HAVE B... more »EEN STUDIED WITH PASSION AND ARE NOW REVEALED WITH RELIGIOUS ZEAL HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON MCMXIV 2 jJCiv* Si+ 4( PREFACE More than a dozen years ago musical scholars and critics began to illuminate the musical darkness of New York with lecture-recitals explanatory of the more abstruse German operas. Previous to this era no one had ever thought, for instance, of unfolding the story, or the Leit motive ( if there happened to be any!), in The Bohe mian Girl/ 5 Maritana, or Mar tha/ 5 These and many other de lightful but thoroughly third-class works unfolded themselves as they went along, to the entire satisfaction of a public so unbelievably care-free, happy, thoughtless, childlike, unin PREFACE structed, that it hardly seems as if they could have been our ancestors. Wagner changed all this at a single blow. One could no longer leave one's brains with one's hat in the coat-room when the Nibelungen Ring appeared ! Learned critics, piti fully comprehending the fathomless ignorance of the people, began to give lectures on the Ring to large audi ences, mostly of ladies, through whom in course of time a certain amount of information percolated and reached the husbands the somewhat cir cuitous, but only possible method by which aesthetic knowledge can be con veyed to the American male. Women are hopeless idealists! It is not enough for them that their brothers or husbands should pay for the seats at the opera and accompany them VI PREFACE there, clad in irreproachable evening dress. Not at all! They wish them to sit erect, keep awake, and look intelligent, and it is but just to say that many of them succeed in doing so. The art-form known as the lec ture-recital, then, has succeeded in forcibly educating so large a section of the public that immense audiences gather at the Metropolitan Opera House, one-half of them at least, in a state of such chastened susceptibil ity and erudition that the Tetralogy of Wagner has no terrors for them. The next move was in behalf of the more cryptic, symbolic, hec tic, toxic works of the ultra-modern French school, which have been so brilliantly illuminated by their pro tagonists that thousands of women in the larger cities recognize a mas-1 vn PREFACE ter's voice whenever one of his themes is played upon the Victrola. I shall offer my practically priceless manuscript of Bluebeard for pro duction in French at the Metropolitan, and in English at the Century Opera House; meantime Mr. Hammerstein is so impressed with its originality, audacity, and tragic power that he is laying the corner-stone for a magnifi cent new building and will open and close it with Bluebeard in German, if nq unforeseen legal complications should prevent. 4 It is in preparation for all this activity that I issue this brief but epoch-making little work, KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN. NEW YORK, February, BLUEBEARD CAST OF CHARACTERS Bluebeard ( baritone). Man of enormous wealth but dubious morals. Pioneer of the trial marriage idea. Fatima ( singing actress). Innocent, romantic, friv olous blonde type, rich in personal charm, weak in logic and a poor judge of men. Sister Anne ( soprano). Impulsive, magnetic, am bitious, highly marriageable brunette. The Mother ( contralto). Impecunious, mercenary widow, determined to settle her daughters in life without any regard to eugenic principles. Mustapha ( robust tenor). Elder brother; the one who has the fat acting part since he rescues Fatima and slays Bluebeard. Other Brothers ( falsettos). Of no account save to show the size of the family to which Fatima belongs and her mother's sound convictions on the subject of race suicide. The

ISBN-13: 9781406755350
ISBN-10: 1406755354
Publication Date: 3/15/2007
Pages: 72
Rating:

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Publisher: Wiggin Press
Book Type: Paperback
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

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