Naughty Marietta–Let’s Dig Into the Music

We are providing a beautiful picture of Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, although we are going to be featuring many performers in this review. It isn’t often that we get such a wide variety of versions of the songs from one show, so we are going to take advantage of it.

We played the Overture from the 1978 New York City Opera broadcast in our last post; in this post, we will start with the opening chorus from the same broadcast. This choral number permits us to feel how this great city came awake every morning. Like the city itself, the music starts off slowly and does not come to the melody until about 2 minutes have elapsed on the clip. But it is worth waiting for, especially if you have never heard it before. You will hear the sopranos sing, “Come, come, come for the morning is breaking!”

The next song is a well-known marching song, and it introduces the Americans who have come to capture the pirate Bras-Pique. Unfortunately, there is no video clip of Nelson Eddy singing this song from the movie. There is, however, a good audio clip that we have found for you.

In addition we have one of his main rivals, listed in the previous post, John Charles Thomas, who sang this song with a chorus on the Westinghouse Radio Show in 1943.

Finally, we have a version from the 1978 Mauceri broadcast, this time in its original key for a tenor. The broadcast version was sung by Jacques Trussel.

We now get down to the business of determining mates between the French farmers and the casquette girls, in the song, “Taisez-Vous.” The men are vying for the women; the women are asking the men to be quiet in formal french language. If the women knew the men, they could use the familiar form, “Tais-toi.” Here is the 1976 broadcast version.

Next, we have Marietta carefully emerging from her urn when only Warrington is present. She sings the title song, “Naughty Marietta,” to show her good and bad temperaments. We can find nothing from the movie, but we have the song from the 1978 broadcast, sung by Gianni Rolandi.

As the two spar with one another, the audience can tell that they are attracted by neither wishes to admit it. Finally, they decide that they can be friends without getting romantically entangled as they sing “It Never, Never Can Be Love.” We cannot find a version with Jeanette and Nelson; we were able to find a version between Nelson and Nadine Conner.

And we do have Jacques and Gianni singing this song from the 1978 broadcast. Just be aware that this is now in the treble key for a tenor.

We are just a little more than half way through the first act, but there is a lot of music to digest in this post (eight versions of the songs). So, we will stop here, and start again on Thursday.