Summary
Aurora Meredith’s larynx is a village forge: annealed by coal-dust Sundays, hammered by hymns, cooled in river mist. One crystalline alto note detonates the patronage of Mrs. Thorndyke, Manhattan matron with coffers deep enough to ship the anvil-voiced girl across the Atlantic, into velvet salons where scales are weighed in diamonds. Three seasons of Italian tuition, and the benefactress expires mid-aria, leaving Aurora to bargain with Juliantimo—silk-gloved Mephistopheles whose purse strings tighten into matrimonial chains. She escapes on the crest of a trans-Atlantic wave of fame, lands a prima-donna contract, but the impresario of obsession shadows her, nests in the flies, and on the glittering knife-edge of opening night fires a single bullet that silences the diva and himself. The wound cicatrizes; the voice, however, is exorcised. Applause curdles into echo; carriages roll away. She limps back to the hamlet of iron clang and lilac dusk, embraced only by Phineas Scudder, the childhood blacksmith whose pulse beats in 6/8 time. When death knocks again—her mother’s final exhalation—grief splits the scar tissue, loosing the imprisoned timbre. Yet Aurora, tasting salt of earth rather than champagne, renounces the cosmopolitan altar of art, understanding that love’s single blossom wilts if plucked twice. She remains, aproned, at the forge, exchanging bravura cadenzas for the quiet ring of hammer on horseshoe.
Synopsis
Aurora Meredith, the village blacksmith's eldest daughter, is blessed with a natural singing voice. One day, wealthy New Yorker Mrs. Thorndyke visits Aurora's village and, upon hearing the girl sing in the church choir, is so impressed with her ability that she sends her abroad to study. At the end of her third year of studies, Aurora's benefactress dies, and she is forced to accept the aid of Juliantimo, an Italian admirer. After attaining great fame as a singer, Aurora returns to America to escape her Italian admirer's attentions and is awarded the starring role in a new opera. Juliantimo follows her, though, and on opening night he positions himself in a box above the stage, shoots Aurora, and kills himself. She recovers, but loses her voice, and with the loss of her talents, her friends desert her. Lonely, she returns home, where she is welcomed by her family and her childhood sweetheart Phineas Scudder. The traumatic death of Aurora's mother restores her singing voice, but she finally realizes that true love comes but once to every woman, and she chooses to stay in the village as Phineas' wife.
Review Excerpt
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Allen Holubar’s 1920 curio Once to Every Woman is less a motion picture than a fever chart plotted on celluloid: temperature spikes of grand-opera excess, troughs of Puritan restraint, all calibrated to the millimetre by cinematographer Byron Haskin before he turned his lens toward pirate galleons and Martian war machines. Viewed today, the film feels like opening a tarnished locket and finding inside not a sepia portrait but a live artery still spurting crimson.
A Village Anvil as Genesis
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