Georges Thill: Advent Calendar of Song - Day Two
Many of you are dance people; some of you will know this not as the song it is but as the solo variation danced by Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon in Act Two. I must have known Manon as a ballet for ten years when I heard this recording on BBC radio:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUFkCXm-GtM
Many of you are dance friends; some of you will know this not as the song it is but as the solo variation danced by Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon in Act Two. I must have known Manon as a ballet for ten years when I heard this recording on BBC radio. Hearing it in the original form, and with this singer, I fell deeply in love. It’s about intimate seduction: the words “Les yeux indiscrets ne sont plus à craindre,” “Le nuit protège ton front rougissant”, “Tu ne viens pas, tu ne viens pas” leap out. (Words and translation below.) I love its rapid-heartbeat rhythm and its caressing phrases.
The singer is the French tenor Georges Thill (1897-1984), an amazing artist of impeccable diction whose range was as great as yesterday’s Peter Mattei: he sang both lyrical and heroic roles by Wagner, Verdi, Puccini (he was the first French Calaf in “Turandot”), Gounod, Bizet, Massenet, and made two of the first complete recordings of opera, Massenet’s Werther and Charpentier’s Louise. He was trained in Naples by the great (but very dissimilar) Fernando de Lucia, of whom more hereafter; his career included Covent Garden, La Scala, the Vienna State Opera, the New York Met, and the Teatro Colón Buenos Aires. He can sometimes be too formally genteel, too royal drawing-room, but not here; I think it’s a miracle of phrasing. I’m ravished by the light attack of his rhythm, the sweetness of tone in the words “embaumé” and “sereine”, his portamenti (slurs, linking one note to another) in “l’instant de l’amour” and “sourit dans le ciel”, the intimacy with which he delivers the gruppetti (flourishes), his diminuendi (literally, diminutions) in “C’est l’heure”), the way he contrasts the monosyllable “Vois!” (“Look”), with the long and tender phrase that follows, “la route est sombre sous les rameaux enlacés!” (“the path is dark beneath the entwined branches”). Come to think of it, those are very de Lucia virtues: de Lucia applied them in music from Rossini opera buffa to Neapolitan songs, and even as Lohengrin. Thill made innumerable stylish records, but this is his most deeply charming and musically fascinating. He recorded this in 1932, when he was in his thirties and already a French national institution.
Nuit d’Espagne – Spanish Night
L'air est embaumé,
La nuit est sereine
Et mon âme est pleine
de pensers joyeux;
ô bien aimée,
Viens! ô bien aimée,
Voici l'instant de l'amour!
The air is perfumed, the night serene
And my soul is filled with joyful thoughts;
O my beloved, come! my beloved,
Now is the moment of love!
Dans les bois profonds,
où les fleurs s'endorment,
où chantent les sources;
Vite enfuyons nous!
Vois, la lune est claire
et nous sourit dans le ciel...
Into the deep woods, where flowers slumber
And where the streams sing,
Quickly, let us flee, let us flee!
Look, the bright moon smiles at us from the sky.
Les yeux indiscrets
ne sont plus à craindre.
Viens, ô bien aimée,
la nuit protège ton front rougissant!
La nuit est sereine, apaise mon cœur!
Viens! ô bien aimée,
la nuit est sereine, apaise mon cœur!...
c'est l'heure d'amour! c'est l'heure!
Prying eyes need no longer be feared,
Come, my beloved, night conceals your blushing brow!
The night is serene, soothe my heart!
It is the hour of love! The hour!
Dans le sombre azur,
les blondes étoiles
écartent leurs voiles
pour te voir passer,
ô bien aimée!
Viens, ô bien aimée,
voici l'instant de l'amour!
J'ai vu s'entr'ouvrir
ton rideau de gaze.
Tu m'entends, cruelle,
et tu ne viens pas!
Vois, la route est sombre
sous les rameaux enlacés!
In the dark blue sky the pale stars
Draw aside their veils to see you pass,
O my beloved, come! my beloved,
Now is the moment of love!
I saw your muslin curtains move,
You can hear me, cruel one,
And you do not come, do not come!
Look, the path is dark beneath entwined branches!
Cueille en leur splendeur
tes jeunes années,
viens! car l'heure est brève,
Un jour effeuille les fleurs du printemps!
La nuit est sereine, apaise mon cœur!
Viens! ô bien aimée,
la nuit est sereine, apaise mon cœur!...
c'est l'heure d'amour! c'est l'heure!
(words by Louis Gallet)
Gather your youthful years in their splendour,
Come, for time is short!
A single day scatters the flowers of spring!
The night is serene, soothe my heart!
Translation © Richard Stokes, author of A French Song Companion (Oxford, 2000)