Classical Music | Soprano

Recorded on 01/31/2006, uploaded on 01/14/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Apparition, from Quatre chansons de jeunesse Claude Debussy

APPARITION (Stéphane Mallarmé)

The moon was saddened.  Weeping seraphs,

Dreaming, clutching their bows, amid the calm of the gossamer blossoms,

Were firing chaste sobs from dying viols

Which slipped over the blue corollas.

It was the blessed day of your first kiss.

My reverie, taking pleasure in my martyrdom

Was knowingly intoxicated by the scent of sadness

Which, even where there is no regret or disappointment, is left by the

Harvesting of a Dream in the heart which harvested it.

So I was wandering, my eyes fixed on the aged cobbles

When, the sun on your hair, in the street

And in the evening, you appeared to me laughing

And I thought I saw the fairy with her helmet of light

Who long ago would pass through my lovely, spoiled-child's dreams

For ever letting white bouquets of scented starts drift down in a

Snowfall from her open hands.

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.