Page 8 - Omar!

“What!” cried the director. “Did they suggest making a change to
the ending?” His bearing projected great indignation; Baron knew
nothing of Fey’s thespian origins.
“It doesn’t matter,” the trustee replied, then sighed and returned to
the libretto. “The scene continues with the Grape-angel opening the
door, and the mob entering. Omar sits near the door while the others
are being served. Then the barkeeper’s daughter enters with more
wine. She’s called ‘Vine-daughter’. Why is that?”
“You’d have to ask Omar or FitzGerald. One obvious reading is
that she and her father are personifications of wine—and, less
obviously, of whatever wine represents.”
The point made little impression on Baron, who read on.
“Okay. Omar chats her up, and invites her on a picnic, singing ‘But
come with old Khayyam’; they exit, and the scene ends. When the
lights go on again, the setting is late morning, along a river bank out
in the boondocks. The couple stroll along until they come to a tree;
there they sit down and spread out their lunch.”
“Ah, yes, a very idyllic scene. It is still early in the day, and Omar is
in good spirits—excuse the pun. He and the Vine-daughter sing a
lovely duet here, based on the famous lines,

Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse—and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness—
And Wilderness is Paradise enow.

But Omar, surrounded by the beauties of nature, cannot help noting
how people and flowers alike must come and go, fertilizing the earth
for the next generation.”
The trustee made a face.
“All very poetic, Mr. Fey, but I’m not here to judge the literary
merits of this material. I think we can skip over the next song, ‘In this
batter’d Caravanserai’, don’t you think?”
The director was still in an emoting mood.
“You mean because it hasn’t provoked any outrage yet? But here
Omar integrates the continuity of nature with the inevitability of
death. And he explicitly names great kings as having no more power
over that fate than flowers in the garden, their relatively different life
spans being of little consequence. Musselman concludes that aria

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