MARTHA - Beginning of ACT I

From the Bel Canto Opera production: The boudoir of Lady Harriet Durham. Richmond, England,1710.

MAIDS: Once Milady was so jolly
Brimming with life and full of fun
Now she's gone rather strange
Filled with doleful melancholy
Cold and aloof to everyone
What has prompted this change?
Once she was a sparkling, witty, gracious, charming, belle of the ball
debonair, so radiantly pretty
Now she does not give a jot
for the swains she took such pains to enthral
NANCY: (to maids) Why would someone once so cheerful
Blissful, blithe and gay
Turn so dull, morose and tearful?
Choose to act this way?
Wracked with deep dismay
(to Lady Harriet) Old Lord Mickleford sent roses
HARRIET: Chuck them in the rubbish bin
NANCY: (offering bracelet) with a bracelet set with diamonds
HARRIET: Throw it in this biscuit tin
NANCY & MAIDS: Madam
HARRIET: Leave me
NANCY & MAIDS: Madam...
HARRIET: Leave me! When I feel such bleak despair,
To inflict my feelings on you
Would be churlishly unfair
MAIDS: Madam, we're concerned about you
You, whom we have loyally served...
and have known for so long
Life at Court is dull without you
Something's amiss, as we've observed,
Won't you tell us what's wrong?

NANCY: I see the signs of copious weeping
Eyes once dazzling, filling with tears,
We can tell you've not been sleeping,
It's no surprise that your eyes
Are as red as a tippler who's showing her years
HARRIET
Ah, leave me alone to grieve on my own
Let me grieve alone
NANCY: Let her grieve alone
MAIDS: Come let her grieve...
...and moan, alone
words © Tom Boyd

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Bel
• Canto
• Opera
• Martha
• Flotow
• Lady
• Harriet
• Amanda
• Boyd
• Nancy
• Sue
• Black
• Tom

[hughdrover]

Wolfgang Strietzel, from Muenchen, Germany writes:

Congratulations! I enjoyed your Gloucestershire "Martha" very much which is also true for Tom Boyd's English adaption of the libretto; in my opinion Tom Boyd has created a text which fits much better than the German original, and even more so as your "Martha" was performed in Britain, by English-speaking singers, and designed to meet an English audience.

[Erismena]

Vous avez raison sauf que :

- la partition de Flotow a été pensée en allemand et pour la prosodie allemande. Elle délivrera probablement toutes ses qualités en allemand!!

C'est aussi idiot que de jouer Oberon de Weber en allemand alors que l'oeuvre a été pensée en anglais...

[hughdrover]

By 1885 Martha had been performed in French, Italian and English. The tenor aria Ach so fromm is better known in Italian translation as Mappari. The prime aria The Last Rose of Summer is an Irish song with English words, which Flotow translated as Die letzte Rose for a German-speaking audience. The original German text is of no literary merit and as the story is set in England and all the characters are English, it would be absurd to sing the opera in German for an English-speaking audience.

[prejcush]

Thanks for the clip, but the opera should be sung in german, in English it sounds like Gilbert&Sullivan and three little maids from school