Description: Franz Lehár (1870–1948) composed Amours, a cycle of four French songs for voice and piano on texts by the French writer Marcel Dunan (1885–1944), by 1921. The four songs are: 1. Sans phrases, Valse lente; 2. Fruit défendu, Scène chantée; 3. Ce soir, la chambre est vide, Valse lente; 4. À Versailles, Gavotte. Written during the period between Lehár’s enormously successful prewar operettas and the darker, more operatic works of his later collaboration with Richard Tauber, the collection is an unusual French-language component of his song output and reflects his ability to transfer the melodic elegance and dance idioms of Viennese operetta to the more intimate medium of the art song. The two slow waltzes, a dramatically conceived scène chantée, and the deliberately archaic gavotte of À Versailles give the cycle considerable stylistic variety while maintaining love as its unifying subject. Today, Amours occupies a decidedly specialized position in Lehár’s output, overshadowed by The Merry Widow, The Land of Smiles, and his other internationally famous operettas and songs. But it provides a revealing glimpse of the composer working outside his familiar German-language theatrical world, combining French texts and dance forms with the lyrical immediacy that characterizes his best vocal music. Reprint edition.

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