"Maybe they didn't have permission to change any dialogue or lyrics, leaving stage direction, as in current opera productions, open territory for the director to put his mark on the work."
That occurred to me, but there were in fact some fairly minor cuts (not changes, but cuts) in the text and even some of the lyrics of the show for that production. So no, that doesn't seem to be the reason why the "black eye" line was retained.
"Maybe, no matter what Eliza suffered in the past, she is now being shown the equal, if not superior, to any man, even the Professor."
I'm sure that is the general point, but she STILL says: "I shouldn't mind a black eye -- I've had one before this. But I won't be passed over." Clearly, she's not speaking entirely in the past tense there, so it certainly seems to me that she's saying, "Going forward, as long as you don't ignore me, I won't even mind if you sometimes hit me so hard that you give me a black eye." I'm pretty sure this line was retained from Shaw and not written by Lerner, but whoever wrote it, I've always found it shocking. |
