Klarinet Archive - Posting 000767.txt from 2004/03

From: ormondtoby@------.net (Ormondtoby Montoya)
Subj: [kl] The opera (was: Education)
Date: Sat, 13 Mar 2004 12:16:13 -0500

Gene Nibbelin wrote:

> A personal note: If anyone of you composers
> out there writes a Spanish opera, you should
> name the hero,"Ormondtoby Montoya". What
> a musical and rhythmical name. This thought
> came to me the first time I saw your name.

I'm flattered, Gene! :))

....let's see....

Prejudiced French villagers drive a band of wandering gypsies out of
town. In retaliation, the gypsies kidnap a child, but it happens that
the child is the 5-yr old son of a titled English wine merchant who was
visiting the area with his beautiful young wife and his son & daughter.

This is worth at least three arias, one to declare the merchant's
initial bliss and inflated ego, the second to declare the wife's doubts
about being married to an older man who may not truly love her, and the
third to declare the merchant's grief at losing his son and thereby
having no male heir.

The son's name was Tobias Ormond, which is a good English name, but the
gypsy kidnapper was named Montoya, and so we end up with Ormondtoby
Montoya singing an agitated flamenco aria (while the gypsies dance).
He wonders what fate has in store for him. He doesn't know the details
of how he ended up with the gypsies, and one more aria declares his
feeling that he doesn't belong where he is.

Eventually Ormondtoby Montoya finds himself in London. He is now 23
years old. He has accumulated money by dishonest (but understandable,
in view of his upbringing) means. He meets his sister by purest
accident at a tea shop, and they fall in love without knowing they are
related. The English merchant is now dead, but his once-young wife
still survives. Eventually the wife recognizes a ring that Ormondtoby
has worn on a chain around his neck since he was kidnapped.

This gives us several more arias about the two young folks falling in
love, learning their situation, and tragically going their separate
ways.

So what is the final resolution? It would be too trite (heh!) for
Ormondtoby to die in a storm at sea when he leaves London.

Rather, it turns out that neither the English merchant nor his young
wife were faithful to each other. This allows us a reprise of the
wife's aria in which she questions once again whether she should have
married an older man who didn't truly love her. It was an arranged
marriage, and she sings the vengeful gypsy song (reprise from earlier
themes in the gypsy camp) of fate and persecution. Then the aria
modulates into a major key as she declares her love for both her son and
her daughter.

And, of course, since each of Ormondtoby's parents had a child by some
other lover, Ormondtoby and his sweetheart aren't related by blood, and
they can marry and live happily ever after....

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