pallas_athena (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
pallas_athena) wrote2018-12-08 10:32 pm
pallas_athena) wrote2018-12-08 10:32 pm
If love were all
I tried to find a recording of Noel Coward singing this, perhaps the most personal of his songs; but there seems to be none online.
In Coward's absence, Julie Andrews's delivery seems closest to his. Crucially, she doesn't sentimentalise or self-indulge; just delivers the words and lets them speak. I'd wish for a simple piano accompaniment rather than a soupy mess of strings, but she succeeds despite it all.
I'll never forget hearing Alan Rickman and Lindsay Duncan sing this as Elyot and Amanda in Act II of Private Lives, seated comfortably at the piano in Elyot's messy apartment. Like Benedick and Beatrice, Elyot and Amanda are a couple whose favourite form of intimacy is verbal sparring; but the music created a rare moment of calm between them, their shared voices becoming, briefly, another form of intimacy for these two turbulent characters.
In Coward's absence, Julie Andrews's delivery seems closest to his. Crucially, she doesn't sentimentalise or self-indulge; just delivers the words and lets them speak. I'd wish for a simple piano accompaniment rather than a soupy mess of strings, but she succeeds despite it all.
I'll never forget hearing Alan Rickman and Lindsay Duncan sing this as Elyot and Amanda in Act II of Private Lives, seated comfortably at the piano in Elyot's messy apartment. Like Benedick and Beatrice, Elyot and Amanda are a couple whose favourite form of intimacy is verbal sparring; but the music created a rare moment of calm between them, their shared voices becoming, briefly, another form of intimacy for these two turbulent characters.