My Fair Lady

M U S I C A L N O T E S | L Y R I C O P E R A O F C H I C A G O

Lisa O’Hare as Eliza at North Shore Music Theatre, 2011.

PAUL LYDEN

Years before gaining world fame as television’s Sherlock Holmes, Jeremy Brett played Freddy Eynsford-Hill in the film of My Fair Lady.

BRANCO GAICA / OPERA AUSTRALIA

The creative process proved difficult; however, it helped that, with the deaths of both Shaw and his friend Pascal, Lerner and Loewe then felt comfortable allowing themselves some artistic liberties, although they stayed true to the spirit of Shaw’s story. Shaw himself included some elaborations on his original play when adapting it for film, and Lerner and Loewe did the same for their musical (especially as regards Mr. Doolittle: his appearances in both his first scene and then in Act Two – the scene featuring his boisterous 11 o’clock number “Get Me to the Church on Time” – don’t appear in Shaw.) But when it came to the matter of the love story – or lack thereof – Lerner and Loewe had a problem: how to write what amounts to an almost- love song? The answer would be found in the pages of Shaw’s drama. In the final act of Pygmalion , Eliza makes the decision to leave and marry Freddy, now that her lessons in speech are over. She tells Higgins firmly that he’ll have to do without her. In response, Higgins shows a bit of vulnerability, saying, “And I’ve grown accustomed to your voice and appearance. I like them, rather.” It was from these very words that Lerner and Loewe were inspired to write “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face,” certainly one of the show’s most memorable songs. In this, the last of his four solo numbers, Higgins expresses an emotional ambivalence – in fact, a genuine inner turmoil – over Eliza’s impending marriage to Freddy. He alternates between quietly reflecting on his feelings for the girl and gleefully predicting that she’ll soon come crawling back to him. It was in the song’s main theme that Lerner and Loewe developed the memorable “almost-love song” they’d searched for; it became one of Broadway’s most frequently recorded and performed songs, covered by the likes of Johnny Mathis, Dean Martin, and even Kermit the Frog (!), to name just a few of its interpreters. Now it was time to develop a similarly revealing song for Eliza. Loewe actually wrote the melody for “I Could Have Danced All Night” in a single day. The following day Lerner presented him with the finished lyric, in which we can sense her suppressed feelings for Higgins. Interestingly, Lerner was unhappy with one particular line – “Why all at once, my heart took flight”; he felt what he referred to as a “special loathing” for songs in which someone’s heart took on anthropomorphic qualities. But he got over his reluctance: the phrase remained, and this exhilarating, show-stopping number went on to become arguably the most beloved song in My Fair Lady . The absence of a typical love song doesn’t divorce the show from romance completely; there is, after all, Freddy’s “On the Street Where You Live” (even Shaw declared in his afterword that that once Pygmalion was over, Freddy and Eliza married), and in fact, Eliza’s return to Higgins – not

Taryn Fiebig (Eliza) and Richard E. Grant (Higgins) sing “The Rain in Spain” in Opera Australia’s 2008 production.

part of Shaw’s original play – constitutes the final moments of both the film and the musical. Despite the odd structure and lack of a conventional love story, Lerner and Loewe were triumphantly successful in their adaptation. My Fair Lady was absolutely Broadway’s hottest ticket of the 1950s. Without a doubt, for as long as musicals are performed, Lerner and Loewe’s masterpiece will continue its reign. It is, quite simply, perfection. Jay Gummert is a recent graduate of Michigan State University, where he majored in clarinet performance and music theory. He is currently working in the publications area of the marketing and communications department at Lyric.

34 | April - May, 2017