Composers › Franz Lehár › Programme note
Amours (c1920)
Gerald Larner wrote 2 versions of differing length — choose one below.
Sans phrases
Fruit défendu
Ce soir la chambre est vide
À Versailles
Die Lustige Witwe (1905)
Ich bin eine anständige Frau
Komm in den kleinen Pavillon
Lehár was so extraordinarily successful during his long career in the musical theatre - from even before Die lustige Witwe in 1905 to Giuditta in 1934 - that he had little time for anything else, apart from the waltzes and marches that were expected from popular composers in the Vienna of his day. There are, however, some fairly considerable (and not entirely forgotten) orchestral scores, a few sonatas and other pieces for the piano, and some ninety or so songs. Most of the songs, like all of the dozens of operettas, are settings of German words, an art that was so familiar to Lehár that he scarcely had to think about it. His collaboration with the French writer Marcel Dunan, Viennese correspondent of Le Temps for some years after the First World War, cannot have been so easy, however. In fact, he doesn’t always get the French prosody absolutely right in Amours. He never fails, on the other hand, to match Dunan’s flimsy and slightly naughty verse with the appropriate melodic charm.
Two of the four songs, Sans phrases and Ce soir la chambre est vide, are set as seductive slow waltzes of the kind associated with the Parisian café-concert rather than the Viennese ballroom. The other two are presented as miniature comic scenes with detailed stage directions. In Fruit défundu the solo protagonist - Pierrot, who for once has an amorous success to boast about - is told exactly how to vary his demeanour between the minor-key beginning to each verse and the major-key reprises. In À Versailles, a sort of fête galante, one is required to imagine a formal garden in the moonlight with a statue of Cupid holding his bow at the ready and, in the background, the pavilion into which the Marquis and the Marquise will finally disappear. A witty gavotte pastiche, it is set as a duet, with the Marquis masquerading as Pierrot and the Marquise as Colombine, the two parts alternating at first and joining in joyful anticipation at the end.
From Gerald Larner’s files: “Amours”
Sans phrases
Fruit défendu
Ce soir la chambre est vide
À Versailles
Two duets from Die Lustige Witwe (1905)
Ich bin eine anständige Frau
Komm in den kleinen Pavillon
Lehár was so extraordinarily successful during his long career in the musical theatre - from even before Die lustige Witwe in 1905 to Giuditta in 1934 - that he had little time for anything else, apart from the waltzes and marches that were expected from popular composers in the Vienna of his day. There are, however, some fairly considerable (and not entirely forgotten) orchestral scores, a few sonatas and other pieces for the piano, and some ninety or so songs. Most of the songs, like all of the dozens of operettas, are settings of German words, an art that was so familiar to Lehár that he scarcely had to think about it. His collaboration with the French writer Marcel Dunan, Viennese correspondent of Le Temps for some years after the First World War, cannot have been so easy, however. In fact, he doesn’t always get the French prosody absolutely right in Amours. He never fails, on the other hand, to match Dunan’s flimsy and slightly naughty verse with the appropriate melodic charm.
Two of the four songs, Sans phrases and Ce soir la chambre est vide, are set as seductive slow waltzes of the kind associated with the Parisian café-concert rather than the Viennese ballroom. The other two are presented as miniature comic scenes with detailed stage directions. In Fruit défundu the solo protagonist - Pierrot, who for once has an amorous success to boast about - is told exactly how to vary his demeanour between the minor-key beginning to each stanza and the major-key reprises. In À Versailles, a sort of fête galante, one is required to imagine a formal garden in the moonlight with a statue of Cupid holding his bow at the ready and, in the background, the pavilion into which the Marquis and the Marquise will finally disappear. A witty gavotte pastiche, it is set as a duet, with the Marquis masquerading as Pierrot and the Marquise as Colombine, the two parts alternating at first and joining in joyful anticipation at the end.
As we know from Die lustige Witwe, however, a garden pavilion is not always the safest place in which to conceal one’s amours. In the first act, which is set at a reception in the Pontevedrin legation in Paris, Valencienne, the young wife of the venerable Pontevedrin envoy, counters the advances of Camille de Rosillon with the objection that she is a respectable married woman, “Ich bin eine anständige Frau” - though so gently that her ostensible rejection develops into a tender duet. In the next act, set in the garden at the palatial home of the merry widow herself, Valencienne presents Camille with a fan with the words “Ich bin eine anständige Frau” clearly written on it. Once again, however, that noble sentiment leads to an amorous duet - and, on this occasion, not only that but a rapturously taken mutual decision to take refuge in a nearby pavilion, “Kom in den kleinen Pavillon.” The potential disaster resulting from their discovery is averted only by some diplomatic quick thinking and, when it comes to light, the reassuring evidence of the message written on the fan.
From Gerald Larner’s files: “Ich bin eine anständige Frau”