Stradella

Francis Marion Crawford

Jan 1909 · Macmillan

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"The old Venetian senator Pignaver has decided to take a second wife, and his eye falls on his beautiful niece and ward, Ortensia Grimani. The vast difference in their ages doesn't trouble him: as Crawford wryly notes, 'he deemed it only just that after enduring the thorn so long, he should enjoy the rose for the rest of his life.' Seeking to improve Ortensia's accomplishments, he hires the famous singer and composer Alessandro Stradella to give her lessons. Naturally the girl and her music teacher fall helplessly in love as they exchange glances across the neck of a lute. The lovers and their respective servants - Stradella's hunchback serving-man Cucurullo and Ortensia's nurse Pina - elope to Ferrara, leaving the impotent Pignaver raging at his humiliation. In an effort to salvage the situation, he employs two bravi - the mercurial Trombin and the melancholy Gambardella - to ride after his niece and bring her back safely, while disposing of Stradella. The bravi agree with alacrity, although they have already accepted a contract from one of Stradella's spurned lady friends, who has commissioned them to bring Stradella back to her safely while disposing of Ortensia. The question of exactly how they will resolve the matter to everyone's satisfaction is one that they propose to consider in due course - once they have taken money from all sides ..."--Theidlewoman.net