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  • The Poisoned Kiss
  • Joe Law (bio)
The Poisoned Kiss. Ralph Vaughan Williams

With this release, Chandos has filled the one remaining gap in recordings of the operas of Ralph Vaughan Williams. The Poisoned Kiss is his fourth opera, begun in 1927; to say that it was never truly finished is only a slight overstatement. The composition was prolonged, and the composer made extensive revisions near the end of his life. Stephen Connock's excellent accompanying notes quote tellingly from the composer's early correspondence with his librettist Evelyn Sharp, a journalist and writer of children's books (and sister of Cecil Sharp, Vaughan Williams's longtime friend and fellow folk-song collector). Balancing praise and a steady stream of requests for alterations, the letters suggest a good deal of uncertainty about the proportions of comedy and seriousness in the opera. Some letters request a quantity of lyric, romantic moments, yet others reveal concern that the work was too serious, too much like grand opera. Shortly before the premiere in 1936, Vaughan Williams admitted to significant concerns about the dramatic structure, pointing out that the background story is narrated twice and worrying that the explanatory passages about poisons were too long. Accordingly, he cut about twenty minutes of music and a good deal of dialogue before the first performance. When Sharp died in 1955, the composer purchased the rights to the text and, with the help of his wife Ursula, revised it once again. That version was performed in July 1957, about a year before the composer's death.

The source of the libretto is Richard Garnett's "The Poison Maid," a short story in which the scenario in Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Rappaccini's Daughter" is reworked with a happy ending. Whereas the kiss of the beautiful girl who has been brought up on poisons brings about the death of her lover in Hawthorne's tale, Garnett brings the toxic beauty together with a prince who has been fed on antidotes all his life, leading to the conclusion that "the kiss of Love is the remedy for every poison." Sharp expanded Garnett's genial fable, making the parents of the two young people not only rival magicians but a couple who had once been in love—Dipsacus, a professional magician, and the Empress Persicaria, reigning sovereign in Golden Town. Sharp added a number of characters as well, providing comic assistants for Dipsacus (three hobgoblins) and the empress (three mediums). Likewise, the lethal Tormentilla and her prince (Amaryllus) both have a companion/foil [End Page 561] —Angelica and Gallanthus, respectively (the latter clearly a descendant of Papageno). Another of Sharp's innovations was to bring in contemporary references at every turn (Garnett had taken the opposite tack, loading the story with archaic terms), with the result that many of her allusions became quickly obscure.

Styled a "romantic extravaganza," The Poisoned Kiss combines spoken dialogue with music and is thus firmly in the British musical comedy tradition that runs from The Beggar's Opera through the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, taking in Gilbert and Sullivan on the way toward Ivor Novello. Indeed, it is not difficult to visualize a 1930s West End production number built on the opening chorus of the second act, as flower girls deliver floral tributes to Tormentilla. Vaughan Williams directs that this waltz be delivered with "perfunctory charm," underlining the element of parody.

There are many such moments to enjoy in The Poisoned Kiss, beginning with the overture, a potpourri (the score requests the audience "not to refrain from talking during the Overture—otherwise they will know all the tunes before the opera begins!"). In the music of the opera itself, the comic and serious are to be found side by side. For instance, the harp flourish that accompanies Angelica's entrance parodies magical entrances in general, but the clarinet melody that unfolds from it is pure Vaughan Williams in its pastoral quality. The subsequent duet between Angelica and Gallanthus is a reminder of how beautifully Vaughan Williams could set English, the natural stresses of the words and the contour and rhythm of the melody fitting together effortlessly. In this case, the nostalgic beauty of...

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