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The Fountain

1921

O'Neill's story of Ponce de Leon's search for the fountain of youth is a long historical romance that he first wrote in verse and later subdued into a poetic prose. The musical score for the first production was composed by Macklin Marrow, the conductor-composer who supervised the music for plays produced by O'Neill, Kenneth Macgowan and Robert Edmond Jones at the Greenwich Village Theatre. Marrow had appeared as the malicious fiddler in the party scene in Desire Under the Elms.

The text calls for the thematic song of eternal return ("Love is a flower / Forever blooming. / Life is a fountain / Forever leaping...") and one titled "Cities of Gold," that O'Neill described loosely as "a sort of chanty." There is also a "Te Deum" and an Indian chant to a drum. The score no longer exists.

 

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