Enjoy Walk to Paradise by English composer Frederick Delius (1862-1934):
About the above piece:
"Walk to the Paradise Garden" is the orchestral interlude between Scenes 5 and 6 of the opera A Village Romeo and Juliet. The Paradise Garden is actually a dilapidated Pub where the lover's Sali and Vreli can "dance all night."
The rural lovers have known each other since childhood and are willing to die together rather than give in to the pressures that will separate them.
This interlude seems to synthesize many elements found in the opera, the "Paradise Garden," a seedy country dance hall where the two lovers make a pact to do themselves in, a plot of land where they played together during their childhood, the Dark Fiddler and his symbolic social conflicts, the hay barge which will sink in the river and carry them to their death, and most of all, the heartbreak of Love; painful it weaves in long almost unbearable phrases, an operatic play within a play based on the definition of the words "Paradise Garden."
A MOST POIGNANT CLIMACTIC MOMENT from OUR TOWN:
ReplyDelete[Emily has been given this one opportunity to return from her grave to revisit her life as it was on earth. She is accompanied by The Stage Manager. Please LISTEN carefully.]
EMILY: [softly, more in wonder than in grief] I can't bear it. They're so young and beautiful. Why did they ever have to get old?
Mama, I'm here. I'm grown up. I love you all, everything. - I cant look at everything hard enough. [pause, talking to her mother who does not hear her. She speaks with mounting urgency]
Oh, Mama, just look at me one minute as though you really saw me. Mama, fourteen years have gone by. I'm dead. You're a grandmother, Mama.
I married George Gibbs, Mama. Wally's dead, too. Mama, his appendix burst on a camping trip to North Conway. We felt just terrible about it - don't you remember?
But, just for a moment now we're all together. Mama, just for a moment we're happy. Let's look at one another. [pause, looking desperate because she has received no answer. She speaks in a loud voice, forcing herself not to look at her mother]
I can't. I can't go on. It goes so fast. We don't have time to look at one another.[she breaks down sobbing, she looks around]
I didn't realize. All that was going on in life and we never noticed. Take me back –– up the hill –– to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look.
Good-by, Good-by, world. Good-by, Grover's Corners, Mama and Papa. Good-bye to clocks ticking, and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths, and sleeping and waking up.
Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you. [she asks abruptly through her tears]
Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? - every, every minute?
THE STAGE MANAGER: Only the Saints and Poets. They do some.
EMILY: I should have listened to you. That's all human beings are! Just blind people. [(she sighs] I'm ready to go back.
Wilder, Thornton. Our Town Harper Publishing, 1957, pp.97-100
I've always thought The Stage Manager was plawright Thornton Wilder's stand in for God.
I've often thought too, especially in latter years, that Wilder should have had The Stage Manager tell Emily: "Only the Saints, the Poets and the Great Composers, they do –– some."
Thank you, AOW, for this all-too-brief opportunity to experience Heaven on Earth given us by composer Frederick Delius.
Lovely for a Sunday AOW...
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