Jack Beeson's Lizzie Borden, which premiered in March 1965, spins off historic events that occurred in Fall River, Massachusetts in the late 1880s. Its brilliantly conceived libretto, by Kenward Elmslie, makes a strong case that the drab but passionate Lizzie cracked under the combined strains of living with a self-centered stepmother and a rigid, uncaring father, and suppressing her unrequited desire for a Captain Jason MacFarlane, who in this opera preferred her younger sister.
When we meet her, Lizzie is a thirtyish spinster who wishes to help Reverend Harrington raise funds to mend Old Harbor Church. But Andrew Borden, Lizzie's rich father, mocked for his stinginess by the very Sunday School children Lizzie helps to teach, refuses to contribute, believing that God wishes him to keep the rewards of his diligence: "He blessed my houses. He blessed my farms: the mills, the woods, the ships, the banks...Who will not work shall not eat!" Andrew is parsimonious where his own daughters are concerned, but squanders his money on his frivolous second wife, Abigail. Margret, Lizzie's sister, has been waiting two years for Jason -- whom she met at a church social -- to ask Andrew for her hand, and now that he is in port once again, he visits the Bordens to take a stab at it...only to be met with insults from her father: "I've seen the likes of your crew, Wops and Bohunks, Polacks and Shanty Irish! What used to be a decent law-abiding town now isn't fit for respectable people." Andrew considers Jason a fortune hunter because he draws a wage instead of owning his ship. In almost a land-locked bow to Gilbert and Sullivan's "When I was a lad" (but dead-serious) Andrew brags about how he began at Fowler's Funeral Parlor, went into real estate, then into cotton mills, and finally into banking. Exasperated with Lizzie's churchly ways and her open detestation of his wife, Andrew tells Jason that, if he marries her, he'll receive as a dowry enough money to buy a ship. Jason, who doesn't much like Lizzie's odd prudery himself, storms out.
