THREE THINGS…
The Three Most Beautiful Broadway Love Songs
An Occasional Commentary on, Well… Three Things
Do things come to you in threes, as they do to me? They do so often that I jot them down in my pocket notebook (actually my iPhone “Notes”). Here’s the first in a series of occasional three-way reflections. I’d love to hear your thoughts… and your “threes.” ~RLJ
- “If I Loved You,” Rodgers and Hammerstein, Carousel
The song starts with a brash bravado: “IF I loved you.” “But you don’t!” “No, I don’t…!” and ends in the quiet yearning of love. Look up the word “yearning” in the dictionary and you read these lyrics:
Soon you’d leave me,
Off you would go in the mist of day,
Never, never to know how I loved you…
…If I loved you.
Both of these renditions bring a tear to my eye. (Click on the links to play.)
If I Loved You, “Carousel” with Shirley Jones and Gordon McCrae
2. “She Was Too Good to Me,” Rodgers & Hart
This ballad was written for Rodgers & Hart’s 1930 musical, “Simple Simon,” but was dropped from the score before opening on Broadway. No wonder it’s obscure! But it regained a life of its own and has been recorded as a stand-alone song by dozens of artists. As a 1960s folkie, I first heard (and heard of) this song on Chad Mitchell’s 1969 solo album, “By Himself.” I was enchanted by the song then, and, over the years, I have found increasing beauty and meaning in it, since I could re-write its title as a description of my marriage: “She is Too Good To Me.” (Speaking of re-writing: The song was originally written as “He Was Too Good to Me,” but various artists have taken liberty with that introductory pronoun.)
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3. “You Have Made Me Love You,” Anthony Burgess, “Cyrano”
Minneapolis’ Tyrone Guthrie Theater commissioned Anthony Burgess to write a musical adaptation of Edmond Rostand’s classic, “Cyrano de Bergerac,” which opened at that theater in 1971, the year that Caryl and I moved to the Twin Cities. (It became our first “Guthrie play.”) Christopher Plummer starred as Cyrano, with Leigh Beery singing Roxana. The play moved to Broadway where — in spite of Plummer’s winning the Tony for Best Actor, and the music being nominated for a Grammy for Best Score — it ran for only 49 performances.
Its relatively short run is probably the reason that ”You Have Made Me Love You” has not gained a place in the Broadway musical canon, yet I stand by my selection of it as one of the most beautiful.
A brief review to introduce the song: The swash-buckling and eloquent Cyrano has been voicing words of love with which the handsome but empty-headed Christian is wooing Roxana; all the while, Cyrano, in the shadows under the balcony, is falling in love with her himself. It is as Cyrano is dying, in the third act, that Roxana coincidentally discovers the subterfuge, and realizes that he is the one she has loved all along — because of the words.
Bonus song! I can’t listen to Roxana sing “You Have Made Me Love You” to her dear Cyrano without hearing the musical reply of his dying words. Even now, as I write, I get a lump in my throat as I recall the scene on stage at the end of Act III: Roxana kneeling in her beautiful gown, cradling Cyrano’s head, as he rasps out his denial and his vow in one breath:
…and I‘ll ’still say,
the day I die,
“I never loved you… my dear love!
Not I.”
(Get out yer hankies…)
