Barcarolle ♫ Belle Nuit, ô Nuit d'Amour

Barcarolle - Offenbach
Belle Nuit, ô Nuit d'Amour
Subtitles - French & English

Often referred to as the "Barcarolle" - is a piece from The Tales of Hoffmann, Jacques Offenbach's final opera. A duet for soprano and mezzo-soprano, it is considered the most famous barcarolle ever written and described in the Grove Book of Operas as "one of the world's most popular melodies."
The text, concerning the beauty of the night and of love, is by Jules Barbier.

A barcarole (from French, also barcarolle; originally, Italian barcarola, from barca ‘boat’) is a folk song sung by Venetian gondoliers, or a piece of music composed in that style. In classical music, two of the most famous barcaroles are Jacques Offenbach’s “Belle nuit, ô nuit d’amour”, from his opera The Tales of Hoffmann; and Frédéric Chopin’s Barcarole in F sharp major for solo piano. A barcarole is characterized by a rhythm reminiscent of the gondolier’s stroke, almost invariably a moderate tempo 6/8 meter.

Elīna Garanča ♪ Mezzo-Soprano ♪ Nicklausse
Anna Netrebko ♪ Soprano ♪ Giulietta

Elīna Garanča (born September 16, 1976) is a Latvian operatic lyric mezzo-soprano. She was born into a musical family in Riga, Latvia, where her father was a choral conductor and her mother a singer, under whom she learned at the Latvian Academy of Music before continuing her studies in Vienna and the United States.

She is a consummate artist whose distinctively dark, sultry voice boasts a power and warmth to which her regal bearing and alluring looks provide the perfect counterpoise.

Anna Netrebko (born 18 September 1971) is a Russian operatic soprano. In 2007 she became the first classical musician to be selected as one of the Time 100, Time magazine’s list of the most influential people in the world.

Montserrat Caballé and Marilyn Horne
In concert singing the duet "Belle Nuit" Barcarolle
Les Contes d'Hoffmann by Offenbach. Munich, 1990

The piece opens The Tales of Hoffmann‘s third act, set in Venice. It is sung by the characters Giulietta– the protagonist Hoffmann’s love, a Venetian courtesan – and Nicklausse – Hoffmann’s poetic muse, in disguise as his faithful male companion. In addition to the Venetian location it sets the seductive and sinister tone of the Venice act in general and of Giulietta’s character specifically. The music reappears later in the act in a septet, “Hélas! Mon cœur s’égare encore,” which was constructed by editors of the opera.

Andrea Bocelli
London Symphony Orchestra · Lorin Maazel

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“Belle nuit” is in the 6/8 time signature characteristic of barcarolles, allegretto moderato. Approximately a minute of musical introduction occurs before the melody appears, although a flute accompaniment figure which suggests the melody, “suspend[ing] time” and creating anticipation for the melody before it begins, is played throughout the piece. Although it is sung by a juvenile male character, Nicklausse, in a “breeches role”, and a female character, Giulietta, the fact of its being fundamentally a piece for two women’s voices, intertwining in the same octave, means that in productions where Nicklausse has been played by a male baritone instead of a female mezzo-soprano, his part has been reassigned to a chorus soprano.

Barcarolle ♫ Live in Italy
André Rieu & His Johann Strauss Orchestra 
Live in Cortona, Italy. Taken from the DVD Romantic Paradise. 
Carla e Carmen  ♪ soprano e mezzo Brasileiras

 
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Barcarola Offenbach
Kristina Bitenc, Monika Bohinec
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Garanča & Netrebko: "Belle nuit ô nuit d'amour"
Les Contes D'Hoffman -  J. Offenbach
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Elīna Garanča ♪  Mezzo-Soprano ♪ Nicklausse
Anna Netrebko ♪ Soprano ♪ Giulietta
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