Woman With A Dreaming Heart Poem by gershon hepner

La femme, sings Offenbach, dont le coeur rêve,
which means a woman with a dreaming heart,
is disinclined to give this heart forever,
but always will––as soon as her eyes dart
on someone else, perhaps a faithful shepherd
persuading her to be unfaithful––be
more changeable than spots of any leopard,
unfaithfulness her note that’s middle C.
The aria tells us that the woman with the
dreaming heart does not have any sleep;
when the shepherd plays for her his zither
I’m sure that neither will be counting sheep.
Unfaithfulness, thy name is woman, I
declare, deceitful as a smart Marrano,
but when with me she’s willing to get high
she proves to be a lyrical soprano.

Inspired by a performance of Natalie Dessay of La femme dont le coeur rêve, an aria from Jacques Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffman. Rebecca Mead writes about Natalie Dessay in The New Yorker, March 2,2009:

She has been married for fifteen years to (Laurent) Naouri, for whom she converted to Judaism….[T]hey rarely work together. When they do, it is sometimes to great effect, as in a 1997 production, in Lyons, of “Orpheus in the Underworld, ” in which Dessay played Euridyce and Naouri played Jupiter. In the “Fly Duet, ” Jupiter, in the guise of a fly, seduces Eurydice. Naouri told me, “It got very sexy, because at her own suggestion, she would climax on a top E when I was going down on her. It’s on YouTube. Anyone can see it.” Twenty-nine thousand people have, enjoying the spectacle of Naouri, in a bulbous insect costume, chasing Dessay, who––with her black bob, negligee, and fishnet stockings, bears a striking resemblance to Betty Boop, but with an even higher pitch.

3/2/09