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Lipscomb's script was set
in contemporary Paris.
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The conductor of the opera
is found murdered,
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and in his hands is left a manuscript,
"Thine is the Glory".
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A remark is made
by those reading the music
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that it appears to have been written
by a soul in torment.
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Soon we meet
a mysterious music master.
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He wears a mask and tells Christine,
a young singer,
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that it is a terrible scar
left by the war, which no one must see.
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The war, of course, is World War I.
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Christine tells her music master
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that her family is Swedish,
and therefore very superstitious.
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Before his death, her father had told her of
the "angel of music" that he would send,
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necessary to her becoming
an accomplished singer.
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Her voice is fairly mediocre,
and the master explains
:58:47
that her voice needs
to come from another world.
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She's a very modern girl in modern Paris,
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and of course she has
a modern boyfriend, Raoul.
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She pursues Raoul through the streets
of Paris, losing him in a store,
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where she mistakenly approaches
an underwear-clad male mannequin
:59:06
to ask where her beloved has gone.
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If that's not silly enough, she and Raoul
have a rendezvous at a Parisian café
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which has a small café orchestra, where
a banter song between the two of them
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goes back and forth, full of risqué lyrics.
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The opera being staged
is Gounod's Faust,
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and the music master explains
to Christine that he had always hoped
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there would be someone like her,
someone to be the Marguerite to his Faust
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and save him from himself.
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The music master explains to her
the horrors of the First World War.
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"They made a killer of me,
the most sensitive creature in the world,
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the kindest man, who would
not even kill an insect!"
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"Yet one day I found myself
in battle on the great attack,
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killing, killing, killing my fellow men!"
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"I remember looking
into the face of one man."
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"He was a boy, very young."