Summary
Rosa Roma’s voice is caged gold, sealed behind a contract that forbids her name, her heart, her reflection in any shop-window. Ogden Ward, patron-as-panopticon, trades applause for anonymity, demanding she become a disembodied aria echoing through gramophone horns. Enter Griffith Ames, composer of tidal chromaticism, who hears not a commodity but a comet; together they forge an opera that detonates the proscenium and, worse, the clause that would keep her chaste from life. Ward retaliates with the cold arithmetic of ownership: a ruby collar once looted from a Burmese temple, now the talismanic ransom for her breach. The stones disappear, Ames is shackled by suspicion, and Rosa must decide whether art is worth the scaffold. In the final reel the true thief—Ward’s own factotum—spills guilt like wine across white marble, returning both rubies and reputation, while Rosa reclaims her timbre and her beloved on a stage no longer rented but sovereign.
Synopsis
Rosa Roma, an aspiring singer, is signed by backer Ogden Ward on condition that she not fall in love, appear in public, or use her own name. But she meets composer Griffith Ames, falls in love with him, and stars in his new opera. When Ward upbraids her, Rosa tries to satisfy her contract by means of a ruby necklace, which he has been secretly trying to obtain through devious means, but the rubies are stolen. Ames is accused of the theft, but the culprit finally confesses, and Rosa is reunited with Ames and her rubies.
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