ABSTRACT
As we have seen, Fauré had faced insuperable difficulties in 1891 in attempting to coax a libretto out of the wily and uncooperative Verlaine at the behest of the implacable Princesse de Polignac. On the other hand, the Cinq mélodies ‘de Venise’’ (to poems written twenty years or so earlier) had been hugely important in re-establishing the composers creative self-confidence. Here was poetry, at last, to which he could genuinely respond without compromising anything of his artistic integrity. These texts fitted him like a glove: they were more naturally musical than anything he had set in the past (‘De la musique avant toute chose … De la musique encore et toujours!’, as Verlaine famously wrote 1 : ‘Music above everything … music again and forever!’).
