Happy Valentine's Day

Continuing our Gaggle of Wonderful, but Little-Known Love Songs, here are two gems from the 1964 British musical, Robert & Elizabeth, based on the play The Barretts of Wimpole Street (later a movie) about the poets Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett.  The score is terrific, befitting a story about two renowned poets, written by Ron Grainer and Ronald Millar.

This first song has some of the best best, most effective rhymes I've heard in a song, "I Said Love."  It's when Robert Browning expresses his love to Elizabeth, but she -- knowing the profoundly strict rules set down by the families overbearing father -- has tried to explain that a romance simply would not be possible.  Singing here are June Bronhill and Keith Michell (who later starred as Don Quixote on the West End in Man of La Mancha, and is probably best-known to American audiences for the Masterpiece Theatre mini-series, The Six Wives of Henry VIII and also his semi-regular appearances on ​Murder She Wrote.

This next song is one of my favorite love songs in a musical, I Know Now.  It comes at the end of the first act when Elizabeth has finally given in to circumstances and acknowledges that she loves Browning as much as he does her.  Though still with many hurdles ahead -- not the least of which is her father and her poor bed-ridden health.

For years, I could only play the audio of this gorgeous, soaring song -- helped by the voice of June Bronhill who was an Australian opera singer.  But last year I joyfully found video of a TV special hosted by Keith Michell, where one of his guests was June Bronhill, and in costume they recreated this number.