Part of Your World (Twisted Tales)(3)
The orchestra tuned, and began.
In a magical kingdom by the sea, a sad and handsome prince [tenor] longs for someone to share his music and his life. While he and his friends celebrate his twenty-first birthday on a decorated yacht, a terrible storm arises. The prince is thrown over the railing of his ship and is almost drowned but for the intercession of a young and beautiful mermaid, who has the voice of an angel [first soprano].
Upon recovering, the prince declares he will marry no one but the beautiful girl who rescued him.
Then a different beautiful girl appears [same first soprano, different costume], who, although she has the shining red hair of the mermaid who saved him, is mute! So she cannot be his one true love. And yet, as they spend their days together, he slowly falls for her.
But then a rival comes onto the scene. A handsome woman [contralto] serenades the prince with the same song the little mermaid once sang and casts a spell over him, causing him to forget the pretty girl with no voice.
[Note: The contralto is a large, full-busted singer, a favorite of the audience. She gets a standing ovation when she appears, smiling slyly.]
Hypnotized, the prince arranges for the two of them to be wed immediately.
In an aside, the princess-to-be admits to the audience that she is actually a powerful sea witch. She desires revenge on the mermaid, whose father, the King of the Sea, cast the witch out of his kingdom years before. By failing to marry the prince herself, the mermaid will have neglected to uphold her end of a bargain, and the sea witch will keep her voice forever.
The sun [baritone] then sings about the tragedy of mortal life, which he has to witness every day among the humans below him on earth. He also sings about the peaceful happiness of the immortal mermaids, and how love makes one foolish—but exalted. He drifts across the stage, and, with a clever bit of scenic machinery, begins to “set” as the ballet troupe comes out for an interlude before the finale: the wedding scene.
The prince and the false princess come out dressed splendidly and singing a duet—but the prince’s words are about love, and the princess’s are about conquest. The mute girl looks sadly on.
Then, just as the prince and princess are about to recite their final vows, Triton, King of the Sea [bass], resplendent in green and gold armor, appears with a crash of drums. He and the sea witch sing back and forth, trading insults. Finally he raises his trident to attack…and the sea witch points to his youngest, favorite daughter, the now-mute human standing sadly in the corner. With her other hand, she shakes a large painted prop contract.
Defeated, Triton gives in. He trades his life for the little mermaid. The sea witch casts a terrible spell, and with a puff of theatrical smoke the King of the Sea is turned into an ugly little sea polyp, which the sea witch holds triumphantly aloft.
[As a puppet manipulated by the contralto, it even moves a little, which draws a gasp from the audience.]
Triton’s daughter turns back into a mermaid and jumps sadly into the sea. The prince and the false princess are married. The false princess croons triumphantly to the little polyp that was once Triton, and talks about how she will keep him forever in a vase in her room.
The moon [mezzo-soprano] comes out and sings an ethereal, haunting version of the sun’s aria. But hers is about the inevitability and sadness of love, and questions what makes a happy ending. For if the little mermaid had stayed at home and remained a mermaid for all her days, ignorant of love, would that really have been better?
The crowd went mad. If the subject matter of the opera seemed a little fantastic, if the end a little gloomy, if the orchestration maybe just a tad simplistic compared to works by more professional, starving musicians—well, it mattered not. Never before had the amphitheatre been witness to such a display of clapping, screaming, stomping of feet, and whistling. So many roses were thrown at La Sirenetta and the sea witch that they were in danger of suffering puncture wounds from the thorns.
Everyone was already clamoring for an encore performance.
“Perhaps we should,” Prince Eric said. “A free performance—for all of the town! At the end of summer, on St. Madalberta’s Day!”
The cheers grew even louder.
Nobles seated closest to the royal box made a show of appropriately classy, restrained enthusiasm—while keeping their eyes on the prince and princess. Only a fool would have failed to notice certain similarities between the sea witch and Prince Eric’s beautiful wife, Vanessa. That night in the great stone mansions, over tiny cups of chocolate and crystal glasses of brandy, there would be much discussion of the thousand possible shades of meaning behind the words in the lyrics.
But the brown-haired princess was grinning and laughing throatily.
“Eric,” she purred, “that was positively naughty. And wonderful. Where do you get such imaginative ideas?”
She coquettishly took his hand like they were newlyweds and walked out proudly with him into the crowd, beaming as if she were also the mother of a very talented and precocious boy. Her two manservants trailed behind them, looking back and forth at the crowd with suspicious smiles, seemingly ready to kill at a moment’s notice should it be required.
Nothing was required; everyone was joyous.
Among the hundreds of people and creatures that were audience to this spectacle, only one was flummoxed by it.
Scuttle stood stock-still, an unusual pastime for him. Two very important things had been revealed in the play. And while he was as scatterbrained as a seagull generally is (perhaps more so), the wisdom of his long years made him stop and try to focus on those things in his muzzy mind, to remember them, to pay attention to his quieter thoughts.