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"Plaisir d'amour" (literally "The pleasure of love") is a classical French love song written in 1784 by Jean-Paul-Égide Martini (1741–1816); it took its text from a poem by Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian (1755–1794), which appears in his novel Célestine.
Contents
The song was greatly successful in Martini's version. For example, a young woman, Madame Julie Charles, sang it to the poet Alphonse de Lamartine during his cure at Aix-les-Bains in 1816, and the poet was to recall it 30 years later.
Hector Berlioz arranged it for orchestra (H134) in 1859. Louis van Waefelghem arranged the tune for viola d'amore or viola and piano in the 1880s. It has been arranged and performed in various pop music settings.
Recordings
Notable classical singers who have recorded Martini's original song include Rosa Ponselle, Victoria de los Ángeles, Tito Schipa, Fritz Wunderlich, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Janet Baker, Inese Galante, Yvonne Kenny, and many others. In 2014, Plácido Domingo recorded the song for his album, Encanto del Mar.
Notable interpretations of modern arrangements of the song include those of Karrin Allyson, Joan Baez, Brigitte Bardot, Vicki Brown, Charlotte Church, Marianne Faithfull, Nana Mouskouri, and The Seekers.
One of the more unusual recordings is by Paul Robeson. Notable appearances in films include Irene Dunne in Love Affair; Montgomery Clift played the music on the piano and sang the song as well in The Heiress; the song's music is featured in the opening of the 1955 movie We're No Angels; Joely Richardson, as Marie Antoinette, sings it in the 2001 film The Affair of the Necklace; "Plaisir d'amour" is sung by an all-female choir in "The Breaking Point", an episode of HBO's 2001 World War II television miniseries Band of Brothers; the 1987 movie La Famiglia by Ettore Scola; the tune is heard repeatedly in the 1977 film March or Die. The melody was used for several songs with new lyrics, including "Can't Help Falling in Love", with Elvis Presley, and "I Want To Live" by Aphrodite's Child.
In literature
Hermann Hesse's short story "Chagrin d'Amour" (1908) narrates a fictional origin for this song at a medieval tournament. Hesse has it composed by an obscure troubadour named Marcel, who sings this song to a queen named Herzeloyde to express his hopeless and unrequited love for her. Hesse took the names of the characters from Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival.
At the start of Robert Anderson's play Tea and Sympathy, the main character, Tom Lee, is singing this "plaintive" song referred to as "The Joys of Love".