[7] The second scene is in a courtroom at the Marine Corps barracks at Charleston, South Carolina, where Nolan is on trial before Colonel Morgan on the charge of treason.

[8] Upon conviction, Colonel Morgan sentences Nolan to be held prisoner at sea aboard Navy ships, never to set foot on land, and forbids anyone to speak of the United States to him.

[14] The May 22, 1937, performance was broadcast live over the NBC Red Network[15][16] The soprano Helen Traubel made her Met debut in the role of Mary Rutledge, Nolan's love, a character not in the original story.

It readily becomes sentimental but rises no higher and constantly resorts to cliches, or in the words of Hazlitt, launches platitudes with the fury of thunderbolts.

"[21] Downes praised the singers, saying Arthur Carron "sang with marked sincerity and feeling" while Traubel had a "big voice, of unusual capacity for dramatic expression".

[22] "As for Dr. Damrosch as conductor", wrote Downes, "he excelled, inspiring all with his own authority and enthusiasm, the geniality of his temperament, the capacity to lead the interpreters and imbue them with his own fire, at the age of 75.

"[23] Oscar Thompson in Musical America wrote "Damrosch has written a score of respectable craftsmanship, if of an order that looks backwards rather than forward.

It is not a distinguished score but it is agreeable in its thoroughly orthodox, eclectic way—well orchestrated, well-knit and shipshape in the things that go to make an opera stage-worthy.

"[5] Walter Strauß in the Austrian magazine Tonfilm Theater Tanz said the "extremely beautiful" music was "young, true, and sensitive", and wished it could be heard in Vienna.

[25] Paul Jackson wrote "Damrosch seems unable to solve the problem of fusing melodic outpourings with continuity of orchestral texture–the latter is merely supportive and does little musically to augment the expression of the text.