Upon this beere ay lith this innocent
Biforn the chief auter, whil the masse laste;
And after that, the abbot with his covent
Han sped hem for to burien hym ful faste;
And whan they hooly water on hym caste,
Yet spak this child, whan spreynd was hooly water,
And song O Alma redemptoris mater!
The Prioress's Tale from Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales is a beautiful story of faith. An innocent young boy sings a hymn to the redeeming virgin. Cruel villains overhear his singing, and plot to slit his throat. The villains are slain, and despite the slit throat, the innocent is able to continue singing the hymn at his own funeral. Chaucer doesn't leave any doubt of the moral:
"My throte is kut unto my nekke boon,"
Seyde this child, "and as by wey of kynde
I sholde have dyed, ye, longe tyme agon.
But Jesu Crist as ye in bookes fynde,
Wil that his glorie laste and be in mynde,
And for teh worship of his Mooder deere
Yet may I synge O Alma loude and cleere.
"This welle of mercy, Cristes mooder sweete,
I loved alwey, as after my konnynge;
And whan that I my lyf sholde forlette,
To me she cam, and bad me for to synge
This anthem verraily in my deyynge,
As ye han herd, and whan that I hadde songe,
Me thoughte she leyde a greyn upon my tonge.
"Wherefore I synge, and synge moot certeyn,
In honour of that blisful Mayden free
Til fro my tonge of taken is the greyn;
And after that thus seyde she to me:
'My litel child, now wol I fecche thee,
Whan that the greyn is fro thy tonge ytake.
Be nat agast; I wol thee nat forsake.'"
It is a miracle. The child's faith is rewarded, and the villains' attempts at silencing him failed. Even if they can kill him, he has a reward in the afterlife coming from Mary herself.
The problem is that people get really confused about the what's going on in the story because the villains are Medieval caricatures of Jews. There weren't any in Chaucer's England, but anti-Semitic stories and myths still circulated. However, that they are Jewish is beside the point. In the 70's, stock villains were Russian. In 14th Century England, they were Jews. Trying to explore this tale from a modern perspective on anti-Semitism will get you nowhere, and will only distract from what is otherwise a nice specimen of Miracle narrative.
Apparently,
composer Delvyn Case fell into that trap. He calls the Prioress's Tale "a tragic and anti-Semitic story," and goes on to say it is " a violent incident involving Christian persecution of Jews." To say he misses the point is a gross understatement. He writes:
I chose to base this opera project upon a tragic and anti-Semitic story from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, "The Prioress’s Tale." My librettist and I, writer Christopher Hood, have transformed this potentially divisive tale into a parable whose primary message is that peace, reconciliation, and forgiveness are possible when each of us validates the our common humanity with others. Our opera is a musical and dramatic portrait of two characters – one Jewish, one Christian – who overcome their fear and hatred of each other by rediscovering their own capacity for forgiveness.
If he wanted to write an opera about reconciliation between religions, why awkwardly force Chaucer's miracle story into it? Mixing up modern sensibilities with medieval literature just undermines both.
