Learn about the songs

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• "Plaisir d'amour" by Jean-Paul Martini
• "Flower Song" from Bizet's opera "Carmen"
• Adagietto from Mahler's Symphony No. 5
• Adagio from Khachaturian's ballet "Spartacus"
• Gymnopedies by Erik Satie
• "Somewhere" from Leonard Bernstein's musical "West Side Story"
• "A Chloris" by Reynaldo Hahn
• "Bailero" by Joseph Canteloube
• "O Silver Moon" from Dvořák's opera "Rusalka"
• "Morgen! (Tomorrow!)" by Richard Strauss
• "Caro mio ben" by Giuseppe Giordani
• "O mio babbino caro" from Puccini's opera "Gianni Schicchi"
• "Marietta's Lied" from Korngold's opera "Die tote Stadt"
• "If I Loved You" from Rodgers & Hammerstein's musical "Carousel"

"Plaisir d'amour" by Martini
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This lovely song by Martini has been popular for over 200 years because it is the perfect marriage of melody and lyrics. The tune is plaintive and memorable, and the words speak wistfully of both the pleasure and pain of love, and the unfortunate imbalance between the two. --Bob Christiansen, classical music host


"Flower Song" from Bizet's opera Carmen:
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Don Jose has been thrown into prison for letting a felon in his charge escape. He doesn’t mind…her name was Carmen, he’s in love with her, she gave him a flower, and in a state of freshness possible only in opera, he pulls it out now and then over the weeks to sing to it. --Bob Christiansen, classical music host


Adagietto from Mahler's Symphony No. 5
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For me instrumental music is often the most moving. Without words, I'm allowed to create my own images, and wander off into my own world. Mahler’s Adagietto from his Symphony No. 5, is perfect music for drifting, and dreaming, and if you have someone to share that with, so much the better. --Julie Amacher, classical music host


Adagio from Spartacus by Khachaturian
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From Khachaturian's 1956 ballet - it's arguably the ballet's best tune (maybe the only tune), but especially romantic in contrast with the rest of the work. Khachaturian's ballet is filled with exotic colors and vibrant, sometimes almost brutal rhythms, so when this adagio comes around it offers a sense of relief and a glimpse of great beauty. It's a gorgeous melody that conjures an image of ancient and lasting love. --Jeff Esworthy, classical music host


Satie's Gymnopedies
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I know Eric Satie’s three Gymnopédies are a bit sentimental and vapid, but to my mind that’s due to their ubiquity. Most of us know this music on some level whether we’ve heard it in the background of a slow part in a movie, when not much happened but a sailboat slowly drifted by; or our sub-conscious picked it up riding on an elevator, waiting at the doctor’s office or browsing at Macy’s. This musical-seeping into our brains seems to have been Satie’s intent. He used the term “furniture music” implying that these minatures could be used to set a mood. For me this Valentine’s Day, I like to remember listening to Gymnopédies as a co-ed at Interlochen Arts Academy. I would just float away from the present into a dreamy and relaxed state, one where romance could very easily be kindled. Nowadays, I might have a glass of wine, but the elixir of Satie’s Gymnopédies still is a pretty sure-fire method to an intoxicated state! --Alison Young, classical music host


"Somewhere" from West Side Story
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"Somewhere" from Bernstein's West Side Story reminds me of old movies, the sort where the leading man asks the leading lady to 'run away' together. All the problems of the world would simply melt away if they could only be together...somewhere else. "Let's run away together"...impulsive, risky, reckless and completely romantic. --Scott Blankenship, classical music host


"A Chloris" by Reynaldo Hahn
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This song has a delicious creamy sound about it. To me it speaks of the joyous satisfaction of love....sweet and uncomplicated. I'm not sure what the words are, but I'll bet they speak of longing. And listen to the strong bass line ( male ) with a gorgeous and complimentary vocal line (female) like ying/yang in western music..... --Steve Staruch, classical music host


"Bailero" by Canteloube
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This French folk song tells of a shepherd longing for his far-away sweetheart. In Joseph Canteloube's setting -- despite the language barrier -- the longing and the loneliness and the sincerity all come through. --Don Lee, arts & culture editor


"O Silver Moon" from Dvorak's opera Rusalka
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This opera tells the story of a water nymph, Rusalka, who has fallen in love with a handsome prince. He often bathes in the lake where she lives. She can caress him there but, of course, he doesn’t know that. Rusalka desperately wants to become a human so that she can pursue this relationship and in the opening Act of the opera she looks to the moon for comfort and sings this beautiful song. --Melissa Ousley, classical music host


"Morgen! (Tomorrow!)" by Richard Strauss
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When I think of romantic+ love songs, I think of Richard Strauss and the beautiful melodies he wrote for the soprano voice, his favorite instrument. He composed "Morgen!" in 1894 and presented it to his new wife, Pauline, as a wedding gift. The text is by John Henry Mackay and the last couple of lines go something like this:

mute we will gaze in to each other's eyes,
and the silence of bliss will fall upon us.

--Melissa Ousley, classical music host


"Caro mio ben" by Giuseppe Giordani
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If you walk into a college practice-room building, you'll hear this 18th-century song sneaking out from under the doors. The tune is easy and teachers often assign it to their first-year singers to build confidence and breath support and get American mouths used to Italian. Though it's an old song, its emotion -- "...my beloved, without you my heart languishes..." -- is always fresh. --Brian Newhouse, SymphonyCast host


"O mio babbino caro" by Puccini
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A dozen years ago, my brother and his wife-to-be asked me to sing at their wedding. Having recently seen the Merchant-Ivory film "A Room with a View," my soon-to-be sister-in-law asked if I would sing the song that Kiri te Kanawa sings over the film's opening credits--Puccini's "O mio babbino caro." I had to confess that I did not have the chops to fulfill that particular request, but I could certainly understand why she wanted it: it's a simple, naive yet incredibly gorgeous slow waltz, carrying on it a young woman's plea to her "dear daddy" to let her marry the young man she loves. It's a real heartbreaker. --Gillian Martin, classical music host


"Marietta's Lied" from Korngold's opera Die tote stadt
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Erich Korngold was a phenomenon, one of those uncanny prodigies they must keep in a hothouse somewhere in Vienna, that bloom from time to time. Marietta's Lied comes from an opera called Die tote Stadt (The Dead City). Korngold completed the opera in his early twenties. But when he wrote this haunting, bittersweet melody he was only 19. Our recording features Renee Fleming.

Die tote Stadt is a strange, dream-like opera, a situation right out of Vertigo. Paul's wife Marie has died. He finds himself attracted to Marietta, and she to him. But then she finds in Paul's house a veritable shrine to Marie, who looks exactly like Marietta. Love and death are mixed. Marietta's Lied is:

"The song of true love,
that cannot but die. . . .
Though dark sorrow approach,
yet draw close to me, my true love. . . .
death shall not part us.
If one day you must leave me,
then believe, the dead shall live again."

--Bill Morelock, classical music host


"If I Loved You" from Carousel by Rodgers & Hammerstein
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If I Loved You from Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel is an anti-love song, and therefore true to life in an almost unnerving way. It's from the famous bench scene, where Billy Bigelow, physical and imposing, and the chaste Julie Jordan, are attracted to one another in spite of themselves. They circle round one another. They strip the illusions from love even as they sing, raptuously, about them. "I don't love you, a'course, you got that, right? I don't love you. But, you know, if I did, 'if I loved you, time and again I would try to say, all I'd want you to know,'" and other irresistibly lovely revelations. Of all his immense achievements in the theater, Richard Rodgers was proudest of Carousel. Our recording features Bryn Terfel giving Billy's side of the story. --Bill Morelock, classical music host