Vois tu, je m’en veux (Les p’tites Michu) (1897)

J’ai deux amants (L’Amour masqué) (1923)

Moises Simon (1890-1945)

C’est ça la vie (Toi c’est moi)

Messager was an organist at St Sulpice and yet a composer at the Folies Bergère. He was one of the most prominent of all musicians in Paris - Debussy’s choice as the first conductor of Pelléas et Mélisande - and yet a resident of Maidenhead. He was an ambitious opera composer and yet a winner only in operetta. It was the success of Les p’tites Michu at the Bouffes-Parisiens in 1897 that restored him from disillusionment in Berkshire to popularity in Paris, where he and his librettists Duval and Vanloo followed up with Véronique, an even bigger hit, a year later.

The Parisian audience presumably did not notice, as an English critic did on its transfer to London, that Les p’tites Michu is “a French Gondoliers” - based on the apparent twin-sister relationship between Marie-Blanche Michu and Blanche-Marie Michu who, it turns out in the end, are children of quite different parents. The romance “Vois tu, je m’en veux,” which is sung by the charming Blanche-Marie to the no less charming Marie-Blanche, is one of the most attractive of Messager’s many waltz songs.

Messager was a popular composer of belle époque operetta and yet towards the end of his life in the 1920s he collaborated happily with Sacha Guitry on two of the musical comedies he wrote for himself and his second wife (of five) Yvonne Printemps. A characteristically flighty Printemps number from L’Amour masqué, “J’ai deux amants” celebrates the heroine’s twentieth birthday and her good fortune in being able to exploit two rich old lovers at the same time.

Moises Simon is best known as the composer of “The Peanut Vendor” - though not as well known as he might be, since the glory for it has been appropriated by band leaders like Glen Miller and Stan Kenton. Little else is known about him except that, born in Cuba, he seems to have spent some time in Paris. To judge by it title Toi c’est moi is Simon’s take on Carmen, a conjecture apparently confirmed by the allusions to Bizet’s Habanera in the introduction to the exuberant conga song “C’est ça la vie.”