Robyn, The song is in Act II, scene 6. It takes place in Desiree's bedroom.
She's sitting on the bed with her skirt up above her knees mending her hem.
Frederik enters and clears his throat.
>Could someone please steer me in the right direction re a book or website
to>find out the background information in relation to the Music Theatre work
'A Little Night Music' by Stephen Sondheim. I have a student preparing
to>perform the well known song 'Send In The Clowns' and we would like to
know a>bit more about the storyline of the show and the song.>Robyn Edgar>
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Robyn, The song is in Act II, scene 6. It takes place in Desiree's
bedroom. She's sitting on the bed with her skirt up above her knees
mending her hem. Frederik enters and clears his throat.
They're discussing the fact that they are nearly in the same situation as
they were a week ago - except that things had progressed a bit more. They
agree that there won't be a repeat performance with Frederik's wife in the
house and Desiree's lover and his wife also in the house.
Desiree says:
"Shall I tell you why I really invited you here? When we met again and we
made love, I thought: Maybe here it is at last -- a chance to turn back, to
find some sort of coherent existence after so many years of muddle. (pause)
Of course, there's your wife. But I thought: Perhaps -- just perhaps --
you might be in need of rescue, too."
Fredrik: From renewing my unrenewable youth?
Desiree: (suddenly tentative) It was only a thought.
Fredrik: When my eyes are open and I look at you , I see a woman that I
have loved for a long time, who entranced me all over again when I came to
her rooms . . .who gives me such genuine pleasure that, in site of myself, I
came here for the sheer delight of being with her again. The woman who
could rescue me? Of course
(pause)
But when my eyes are not open -- which is most of the time -- all I se is
a girl in a pink dress teasing a canary running through a sunlit garden to
hug me at the gate, as if I'd come home from Timbuktu instead of the
Municipal Courthouse three blocks away. . ."
Then Desiree sings Send in the Clowns.
"Send in the clowns," as I understand it, is the circus call to have the
clowns come into the ring to rescue a bad situation. It could be to
distract the audience from and accident or a disruption. The idea is one of
rescue - as is mentioned in the preceding dialogue.
In the introduction to the book, Jonathan Tunick says of the song:
"Sondheim finds the amazing success of this song, thought most welcome, a
little baffling. Most of his shows, he says, have at least one simple
romantic ballad, but none of these had received what seems to him the
disproportionate acclamation attracted by what he refers to as a "boite"
(night club) song. Perhaps its appeal lies to some degree in the fact that
it is written in short phrases in order to be acted rather than sung; in
fact, it was tailor-made to suit the abilities of Glynis Johns, who lacks
the vocal power to sustain long phrases, and the song does not actually work
very well when sung "correctly" by a trained singer."
The book is available from www.amazon.com and Hal Leonard.
The ISBN is 1-55783-070-3. It's $13 U.S., $17 Canadian.
I hope this will be useful.
Cindy Donnell
VCU Dept.. of Music, Richmond, VA, USA
Our opera theatre is performing the show in 2 weeks or I wouldn't know
this or have the information at hand.
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