The Maid of Dionna (Opera)

Written in 1622 by the Eisen child prodigy Johann Merzer, the Maid of Dionna is one of many operas that focuses on Vodacce life and particularly the tangled strands its Fate Witches weave. While its subject is relatively common, it is distinguished by the extraordinary vocal range it requires of the Maid, thought to be one of the harder parts in modern opera.

The Maid of Dionna

A Opera Comique in Three Acts

Prelude (in Pantomime)

Many years ago, two beautiful young ladies vie for the heart of a gentleman from Dionna. One at first seems to succeed, but the gentleman realizes she has a wicked heart and chooses the other, purer lady. Furious, the wicked lady curses her rival - this is the first aria, which opens the play.

Act 1: The Maid and the Soldier

At the funeral of her father, the maid - daughter of the original pure lady - meets a soldier who served in her father's company, fighting the Crescents. They fall in love, and there are scenes of romance, but the wicked lady - now The Strega, an evil old witch - sees their blossoming romance and commences to pull apart their love. She arranges thave the soldier sent back to the Crescent front, now a captain by himself and doomed to die.

Act 2: Lovers Separated

The soldier is fighting the crescents, and the Maid is despondent - only to seek out her grandmother, who tells her of the Strega's curse. The Maid seeks out the Stega, begging for the soldier's life, but the Strega will relent only if the Maid agrees to be imprisoned in a far tower. Then the Strega betrays the Maid, causing the crescents to close in around him.

Act 3: Salvation

The third act begins with the Maid's great aria, singing of how her lover is dead, and she soon will follow. She plans to cast herself into the sea from the top of the tower. Unbeknownst to her, however, her and the soldier's unselfish love have broken the Strega's curse: captured by the Crescents, the soldier convinced the sultan of his virtue, and now he sails with the Sultan's men to rescue the Maid.

The finale is the reunion of the Soldier and the Maid, as the Sultan's men battle the Strega's guards, and then the two are married as the Strega sobs alone.