Métamorphoses (1943)

Reine des mouettes

C’est ainsi que tu es

Paganini

Poulenc was rather dismissive of his Métamorphoses: “I haven’t much to say about them,” he wrote in the Journal de mes mélodies. It is true that they lack the stature of his earlier settings of texts by the same poet, the Trois Poémes de Louise Vilmorin and Fiançailles pour rire, but they include one of the most seductively melodious of all his songs. Framed between Reine des mouettes, elusive in line and frothy in texture, and Paganini, a virtuoso exercise in free association, C’est ainsi que tu es transforms popular song into pure lyrical beauty.