Noel Coward
Noel Coward, one of England’s most brilliant and versatile men of the theater in the 20th century, was born in Teddington, on December 16, 1899. He made his stage debut in 1911 in a fairy play, and for the next few years appeared regularly in various other productions. His career as performer was interrupted by military service during World War I. After the war he decided upon a career as writer. His first major success came with the play The Vortex, in 1924. From then on he wrote dramas and comedies which placed him in the front rank of contemporary playwrights. But his achievements in the theater do not end here. He has also distinguished himself as an actor, night-club entertainer, producer, lyricist, composer, and on occasion even as a conductor. He wrote the texts, lyrics, and the music to several musical productions, the most famous of which is the operetta, Bitter Sweet, in 1929. Other musicals by Coward include Year of Grace (1928), Words and Music (1932), Conversation Piece (1934) and After the Ball (1954). Out of some of these have come such celebrated Coward songs as “Mad About the Boy,” “Mad Dogs and Englishmen,” “Some Day I’ll Find You” and “I’ll Follow My Secret Heart.” An anthology of fifty-one Noel Coward songs from his various musical productions called The Noel Coward Song Book was published in New York in 1953. Never having received any musical training, Coward can play the piano only in a single key, and must call upon the services of an amanuensis to get his melodies down on paper.
Bitter Sweet is his most famous musical, first produced in London on July 18, 1929, and in New York on November 5, 1929. It was twice adapted for motion-pictures, the first time in 1933 in England, and the second time in 1940 in the United States in a production starring Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. In Bitter Sweet, Noel Coward made a conscious effort at writing a romantic, sentimental, nostalgic operetta in the style so long favored in Vienna; indeed it was a hearing of a recording of Johann Strauss’ Die Fledermaus that proved to be the immediate stimulus in the writing of his text. The setting is for the most part Vienna, and the time the 1880’s. Sari, an English girl, is about to marry an English man of means when she suddenly decides to elope with Carl, a music teacher. They go to live in Vienna. Carl comes to his sudden death in a duel, after which Sari continues to live in Vienna where she becomes a famous singer. In her old age, after an absence of half a century, she returns to London.
Three melodies from Bitter Sweet have become extremely popular. The first is a nostalgic waltz, “I’ll See You Again,” from the first act, the love song of Sari and Carl; the song recurs again in the third act, and its closing measures serve to bring the play to a dramatic conclusion. “Zigeuner,” also sung by Sari is, as its name suggests, in the gypsy style so favored by the Viennese public. The third famous melody from Bitter Sweet is “If Love Were All.”
“I’ll Follow My Secret Heart” comes from Conversation Piece, first produced in London on February 16, 1934, and in New York the same fall. The setting of this sentimental and nostalgic operetta is the English resort town of Brighton in 1811 where Paul, a duke turned adventurer, and Melanie, a Parisian chanteuse, are involved in a stormy romance that ends happily. As sung by Yvonne Printemps in London, “I’ll Follow My Secret Heart” was the pivot on which the story rotated, and the main reason for this operetta’s enormous success.