were the Queen and Carmen. The ladies ridicule him (Trio: "I'm not the Queen, ha ha!"). He tells Elvira of Don Pedro's plan, and she arranges for the Duchess of Calatrava, heavily veiled, to impersonate her. The Duchess is duly carried off to a convent, but Pedro and Florio still have not located the peasant girl. Suddenly, she (Elvira in disguise again) appears, singing "I'm but a simple peasant maid". She vanishes, and the Queen, once again appearing as herself, declares, to general consternation, that she intends to marry the muleteer. Act 3 Carmen sings "Though love's the greatest plague in life", followed by a duet with Don Florio. The couple agree to marry. The Queen and her attendants appear, and she sings "Oh joyous, happy day". Don Alvaro arrives to inform her that Don Sebastian is to be married. Elvira, realising that the muleteer Manuel is not Don Sebastian, is enraged, but his ballad "'Twas rank and fame that tempted thee" melts her heart, and she swears to be true to him. Don Pedro is delighted: if the Queen marries a commoner, he can force her to abdicate ("Hark, hark, methinks I hear"). In the Queen's throne-room, Manuel announces that he is King of Castille and will marry Elvira. Don Pedro has to beg for mercy, and Elvira's bravura aria ("Oh no! By fortune blessed"), concludes the opera to general rejoicing: she will now be the Rose of Castille as well as the Queen of León. Allusions to the opera James Joyce's Ulysses contains a number of references to The Rose of Castille (many more than to The Bohemian Girl or The Maid of Artois). The most notable is in the Aeolus section, where Lenehan answers his own riddle, "What opera is like a railway line?", with "The Rose of Castille. See the wheeze? Rows of cast steel." In addition, Manuel's aria, "'Twas rank and fame that tempted thee" is quoted in the same section. Recording The Rose of Castile: Maureen Springer (Elvira), Murray Dickie (Manuel), Angela O'Connor (Carmen), James Cuthbert (Don Pedro), Wexford Festival Chorus, Radio Éireann Light Orchestra, conductor Dermot O’Hara, Rare Recorded Editions RRE 191/2, 1951. Issued on 2 LPs in the 1970s, later (c2002) issued on CD by the Balfe Archive, London. A concert performance of The Rose of Castile was recorded by The Comic Opera Guild in 2010. References Notes Sources Burton, Nigel, "Balfe,