Presenting Mature Themes
Ricci’s Goblin Market (Der Gnomen Markt): Cantata is written for Soprano and Contralto solos and either two- or three-part chorus for treble voices. The choice not to have tenors or basses voicing the goblin men, one assumes, would have softened some of the poem’s sense of threat, in particular, the sense of sexual threat. In fact, the female chorus alternates between singing as goblins (the lines in quotation marks in the poem) and narrating the story and referring to the goblins in the third person. Nevertheless, overall this setting is more adult in its musical sophistication than was Aguilar’s, and appears to have been intended for performance by female adult singers.
toning down
The libretto is adapted less significantly than was the libretto that Rossetti approved for Aguilar’s setting; nevertheless, there is still some toning down of the original poem. For example, the suggestion of sexual fall found in the poem’s references to “fruit forbidden” (l. 479) and the possibility of being “Undone” (l. 482) or “ruined” (l. 483) remain in Gillington’s textual adaptation, bolstering the more adult perspective of understanding Laura’s eating of goblin fruit as a sexual fall. However, Rossetti’s line “Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices” (l. 468) has been subtly but significantly altered to “Hug me, kiss me, drink the juices” (Ricci and Gillington p. 74). Indeed, the entire passage spoken by Lizzie to Laura on her return home after her attempt to purchase curative goblin fruit has been adjusted so that Lizzie’s bravery and sisterly sacrifice remain, but the suggestion of love and physical closeness between the sisters is diminished:
Laura, Laura, did you miss me?
Laura, Laura, come and kiss me!
Never mind the scars and bruises,
Hug me, kiss me, drink the juices,
Crushed from goblin fruits for you,
Goblin pulp and goblin dew.
For your sake I braved the glen,
And had to do with goblin merchant-men. (Ricci and Gillington pp. 73-74)
Similarly, the elimination of the lines “Eat me, drink me, love me; / Laura, make much of me” (ll. 471-72) erases some of the richest interpretive possibilities in the poem, as the original poem’s suggestion of lesbian erotics and Eucharistic sacrifice is significantly suppressed by the omission of these lines.