Small changes change everything
I said I would tell you about one of the small changes I made to MELISANDE, so here you go –
There's this bit in the second half of the first act where the King puts out a call for competent princes, anyone who can lift the curse gets Melisande's hand in marriage, and what happens is that he ends up casting his net wider and wider as the princes continue to fail, and so by the time we get to the third repeat of this little reprise I have this:
PRINCE #9.
DID YOU HEAR
PRINCE #10.
DID YOU HEAR
PRINCE #11.
IT WAS SENT TO ME BY CLIPPER SHIP
PRINCE #12.
THERE’S A PRINCESS
PRINCE #9.
SOMEWHERE FOREIGN
PRINCE #10.
AND IF WE MAKE THE TRIP
PRINCE #9.
WE WIN THE KINGDOM
PRINCE #10.
AND HER HAND
PRINCE #12.
AND ALL WE HAVE TO BRING IS
PRINCES.
TRUE LOVE
AND A KISS
AND A MAGIC POTION
(etc., the list goes on)
So the first problem here is the word "foreign," which works rhythmically if you put a beat after it, but it's an unbelievably unspecific word, and we know that because everyone argues over what it really means.
Which, you know, the last thing you want to do is make your audience uncomfortable twice in the same lyric – first for the use of "foreign," second for the forced scansion – and so I swapped "foreign" for "far away," that was both an easy fix and a more specific choice, and from there I went back and confirmed that I had used internal rhymes on all of the other vessels used for communication, e.g. "clipper ship," both in the original version of this tune and in the reprise, which meant pulling all of that apart and finding better rhymes, which meant giving Prince #9 a more specific character because now he needed a reason to say the word "peripheral," and twenty minutes later we get this:
PRINCE #9.
DID YOU HEAR
PRINCE #10.
DID YOU HEAR
PRINCE #11.
IT WAS SENT TO ME BY CLIPPER SHIP
PRINCE #12.
A PRINCESS
PRINCE #9.
IN A KINGDOM FAR AWAY
PRINCE #10.
AND IF WE MAKE THE TRIP
PRINCE #9.
PERIPHERAL, BUT WORTH IT FOR THE ARMY
PRINCE #10.
AND THE LAND
PRINCE #12.
AND HER HAND, AND ALL THEY ASK IN TRADE IS
PRINCES.
TRUE LOVE
AND A KISS
AND A MAGIC POTION
(and etc.)
I'll tell you why I swapped "bring" for "trade" later – or maybe I'll let you figure it out on your own, once you hear the entire song. 😉