Massenet composed Amoureux d’une étoile in August 1911, just one year before his death on the 13th of August 1912. The poem comes from a collection by Vice Admiral Eugène de Jonquières (1850-1919), a military man and a “homme de lettres” who had a successful career in the navy and was also a poet.
Through Jonquières’ poem, the composer expressed a personal feeling that runs through many of his songs at that time. From 1901 until his death in 1912, Massenet was bewildered by the voice and personality of Lucy Arbell (1878-1947), a young contralto, to the extent that many of his contemporaries perceived a love affair. Although it bears no dedication, the song does indeed bear multiple traces of Arbell’s influence in its conception. The poem then expressed a feeling that echoes the one that Massenet seemed ultimately to feel, especially since a subtle transformation of the first line of the penultimate stanza, whether conscious or unconscious, gives it an autobiographical colour: “Ô vous qui guidez la souffrance” becomes “Ô vous qui guidez ma souf- france”. The range of the melody is finally set in that of a contralto voice.
Jean-Christophe Branger
translation Hjördis Thébault