Duet Singing Quotes

The first pair Opal and Amber are, Agate sings in B flat, the wolf avatar, A duet-solutio! - with Aquamarine. Mighty Emerald next, with the lovely Citrine. Number Eight is digestio, her stand is Jade fine. E major's the key of the Black Tourmaline, Sapphire sings in F major, and bright is her sheen. Then almost at once comes Diamond alone, Whose sign of the lion as Leo is known. Projectio! Time flows on, both present and past. Ruby red is the first and is also the last.

Why is it I can spend a dozen Friday nights staring at the peeling walls of my "room" without anyone in the family so much as poking a head down to see if I'm alive, while the one time I actually have plans (major plans, plans that necessitate extraordinary focus and massive preparation), my stepmother suddenly suggests we sing a duet of "Getting to Know You"?

If someone loves you, truly loves you, it’s because they want to—because they can’t imagine a world in which they don’t. Because you make their soul sing just with your mere existence.

I’m keeping my love story, not because it included both martyr and sacrifice, or because it’s the story I wanted, it’s because I would never rewrite it. And I would live it all over again just for the chance to sing with him.

As she dampens my shirt with sadness and snot, I realize I'm about to do another thing I've never done before. I suck in air and attempt to sing. “You're . . . sensational . . . ,” I croak, struggling for a trace of Frank's melody. “Sensational . . . that's all.” There's a pause, and then something shifts in Julie's demeanor. I realize she's laughing. “Oh wow,” she giggles, and looks up at me, her eyes still glistening above a grin. “That was beautiful, R, really. You and Zombie Sinatra should record Duets III.” I cough. “Didn't get . . . warm-up.

When I’m rich,” Jesper said behind him. “I’m going somewhere I never have to see snow again. What about you, Wylan?” “I don’t know exactly.” “I think you should buy a golden piano-” “Flute.” “And play concerts on a pleasure barge. You can park it in the canal right outside your father’s house.” “Nina can sing,” Inej put in, “We’ll duet,” Nina amended. “Your father will have to move.” She did have a terrible singing voice. He hated that he knew that, but he couldn’t resist glancing over his shoulder. Nina’s hood had fallen back, and the thick waves of her hair had escaped her collar. Why do I keep doing that? He thought in a rush of frustration. It had happened aboard the ship, too. He’d tell himself to ignore her, and the next thing he knew his eyes would be seeking her out.

As I stood in contemplation of the garden of the wonders of space," Milosz writes, "I had the feeling that I was looking into the ultimate depths, the most secret regions of my own being; and I smiled, because it had never occurred to me that I could be so pure, so great, so fair! My heart burst into singing with the song of grace of the universe. All these constellations are yours, they exist in you; outside your love they have no reality! How terrible the world seems to those who do not know themselves! When you felt so alone and abandoned in the presence of the sea, imagine what solitude the waters must have felt in the night, or the night's own solitude in a universe without end!" And the poet continues this love duet between dreamer and world, making man and the world into two wedded creatures that are paradoxically united in the dialogue of their solitude.

I hope he invites me to walk with him, or at least share some local gossip. My heart is singing . . . but no duet. Duets and collaborations. All of nature longs for harmony. Girls are no different. Men need to realize, life is not a solo act. Unity is a potent force, but men don't always see the importance of unifying with a good woman. Find the right woman and watch a man's world transform into a modern-day Paradise. All I'm asking for is a little noticing and a chat or two.

Christine: In sleep he sang to me In dreams he came. That voice which calls to me, And speaks my name. And do I dream again? For now I find, The phantom of the opera is here, Inside my mind Phantom: Sing once again with me , Our strange duet. My power over you, Grows strenger yet. And though you turn from me, To glace behind. The phantom of the opera is there, Inside your mind ♥ ♥ The Phantom of the Opera ♥ ♥

Does a falcon seek company with a swan amidst the lilies of a pond, or sing duets with a nightingale? Or does he soar through the storm alongside his equal, the hawk? Walking the same rocky path. Swimming the same choppy currents. Sharing courage enough to face a thicket of briars with nothing to gain but pain and flame. That’s the true measure of a companion’s worth.

All night i have been making songs for you in my head. A lay for your eyes, a ballad for your lips, a duet to your breasts. I will ot sing them, through. They were poor things, unworthy of such beauty.

dreamed I was watching a Michael Jackson concert, and then I was onstage with Michael Jackson, and we were singing this duet, and I could not remember the words for ‘The Girl Is Mine.’ Oh, man, it was so embarrassing, I—

You can’t possibly adopt stray French monsters; wherever would you put it?” “I have no idea,” she said. “It doesn’t appear to be in bad shape; honestly, I think someone’s been taking at least basic care of it—no mats or snarls, it’s a decent weight for its size, completely tame. It’s not a thoroughbred, though, which means either it’s an adopted stray or it’s been summoned, which is a little odd. God knows why anyone would bother doing that kind of magic, but whatever—I suppose Parisian monster fanciers have to get their jollies somehow. I think it’s come to visit, not to stow away in my suitcase.” “If this keeps up, you are going to be the most absurd Disney princess of all time,” Ruthven told her. “Instead of happy little bluebirds perching on your finger to sing duets, you will be hung about with monsters like a tree with monkeys, and it will thoroughly complicate your personal life.

Like recently, I dreamed I was watching a Michael Jackson concert, and then I was onstage with Michael Jackson, and we were singing this duet, and I could not remember the words for ‘The Girl Is Mine.’ Oh, man, it was so embarrassing, I—

That winter night was the first time she truly knew what it felt like to step outside of herself. Singing felt like breathing, dancing as natural as walking. When she sang her duet with Randy the Farmhand—a lanky drama student at NYU—she felt, almost, as if she were falling in love with him. After the curtain call, the cast surrounded her with cheers, and part of her knew, even then, that it was the greatest performance she would ever give. And she’d only managed it because she knew that somewhere, in the darkened theater, Jude was watching.

Then I saw the keyboard of an organ which filled one whole side of the walls. On the desk was a music-book covered with red notes. I asked leave to look at it and read, ‘Don Juan Triumphant.’ ‘Yes,’ he said, 'I compose sometimes.’ I began that work twenty years ago. When I have finished, I shall take it away with me in that coffin and never wake up again.’ 'You must work at it as seldom as you can,’ I said. He replied, 'I sometimes work at it for fourteen days and nights together, during which I live on music only, and then I rest for years at a time.’ 'Will you play me something out of your Don Juan Triumphant?’ I asked, thinking to please him. 'You must never ask me that,’ he said, in a gloomy voice. 'I will play you Mozart, if you like, which will only make you weep; but my Don Juan, Christine, burns; and yet he is not struck by fire from Heaven.’ Thereupon we returned to the drawing-room. I noticed that there was no mirror in the whole apartment. I was going to remark upon this, but Erik had already sat down to the piano. He said, 'You see, Christine, there is some music that is so terrible that it consumes all those who approach it. Fortunately, you have not come to that music yet, for you would lose all your pretty coloring and nobody would know you when you returned to Paris. Let us sing something from the Opera, Christine Daae.’ He spoke these last words as though he were flinging an insult at me.” “What did you do?” “I had no time to think about the meaning he put into his words. We at once began the duet in Othello and already the catastrophe was upon us. I sang Desdemona with a despair, a terror which I had never displayed before. As for him, his voice thundered forth his revengeful soul at every note. Love, jealousy, hatred, burst out around us in harrowing cries. Erik’s black mask made me think of the natural mask of the Moor of Venice. He was Othello himself. Suddenly, I felt a need to see beneath the mask. I wanted to know the FACE of the voice, and, with a movement which I was utterly unable to control, swiftly my fingers tore away the mask. Oh, horror, horror, horror!” Christine stopped, at the thought of the vision that had scared her, while the echoes of the night, which had repeated the name of Erik, now thrice moaned the cry: “Horror! … Horror! … Horror!

Sappho isn't really meant to be read. It's meant to be sung and there were dances for the songs, also. Sappho was a performance artist, and now she exists as a textual project. She was saved by her critics, and by people who wrote of her in letters to each other. As the morning sun lathers the pool through the long windows and stripes the opposite walls in gold, I look at the fragment translations. She's paper, too. A paper poet for a paper boy. People claim to be translating her but they don't, really, they use her to write poems from as they fill in the gaps in the fragments. A duet. She may have meant for these to be solos but they're duets now, though the second singer blends in with the first. The first singer in this case is offstage, like in the old days of stars who couldn't sing, a real singer hidden behind a curtain, which is the velvet drape of history.

She remembers rehearsals. Wrong notes turning to right ones, dissonance becoming harmony. She remembers “O Holy Night” sounding so perfect, in the end, her voice wrapping itself around Jonah’s like they were created just for this. She remembers his smile at her from across their shared mic. She remembers getting asked to reprise her duet with Jonah a year later. Just after everything happened with Luke. But then Mr. Boyden took her aside. Told her that Jonah had backed out. He’d said he was too busy for extra rehearsals, but she knew: it was because of her. She saw it in Jonah’s face, in the way he avoided her eyes. She saw it in everyone else’s faces too. She was a bullet he’d just dodged. She remembers standing up for the solo she was given instead—her last performance before she quit choir. She remembers opening her mouth, nothing coming out. She’d cleared her throat, tried again. Her voice emerged, but all wrong: small and shaky and sharp. With everyone looking at her, with the rumors still swirling, she felt exposed. She felt small and shaky and sharp. Vulnerable, but made of angles and thorns.

It isn't enough, but it's something. We watch the trees, the sky, the signs, the road. We sense each other. The world, right now, is only us. We continue to sing along. And we sing with the same abandon, not worrying too much if our voices hit the right notes or the right words. We look at each other while we're singing: these aren't two solos, this is a duet that isn't taking itself at all seriously. It is its own form of conversation - you can learn a lot about people from the stories they tell, but you can also know them from the way they sing along, whether they like the windows up or down, if they live by the map or by the world, if they feel the pull of the ocean" -A

Barbara took her accustomed place by the door but as the singing began Margerit beckoned her over to her side. "I haven't been following much except that it's all ancient Greeks and battles and such. What's happening now?" Barbara knelt beside her and leaned close to whisper so as not to disturb the rest of the party. A brief synopsis of what had gone before took up the time while the chorus escorted the principles to the centre of the stage. "I haven't seen this performance before," Barbara added, "but I imagine this will be the grand love duet." As the soprano began, she concentrated on the stage to follow the opening phrases. The chorus had abandoned the field to the principles who faced each other against a backdrop of fluted columns. "O! What strange fate is mine!" Barbara paused as the signature line was repeated several times. "I loved you in the guise of Mars, but now I am betrayed by Venus. The iron in your glance turns soft beneath my touch. I am undone. O Venus, you are cruel to mock me so." It continued on in the same vein until it was the mezzo's turn. Her lyrics ran much parallel with the soprano's. With less concentration required, Barbara ventured a glance to see Margerit's reaction. Margerit turned at the same moment and their eyes met as Barbara whispered Ifis's lines. "O! What a strange fate is mine! In the guise of Mars I love you but now as Venus I'm betrayed. The Iron in my soul turns soft beneath your touch." Unconsciously, Margerit placed a hand on hers where it lay on the arm of her chair. "Fire runs through my veins - I am undone." Fire indeed ran through her veins. Her hand burned sweetly where Margerit touched it and she dared now take it back. Her voice grew husky. "Why do the gods mock me with desire I cannot sate?" Their eyes were still locked and Margerit's lips had parted in a little "o" of wonder. "O Venus, have mercy on one new come to your shrine." When the soprano joined again for the duet, Margerit breathed along with her, "O! What strange fate is mine!" With effort, Barbara wrenched her gaze away.

I’m sorry,' [Marty] said unexpectedly. “Huh?” “That we never got to perform that duet together. Don’t you remember? For the Spring Concert?” “Oh, yeah. What was that song we were going to sing?” I asked. She placed her right hand on her hip and mock-pouted at me. “James Garraty, don’t tell me you forgot.” I gave her an impish who, me look. When she smiled, I said in a more serious tone: “‘Somewhere,’ from West Side Story.” I hummed the song’s first measure; it sounded a half-octave off key. Marty frowned. “You haven’t practiced lately,” she said disapprovingly. “No, I haven’t,” I said, and as I said it waves of melancholy washed over me like a cold dark tide. Marty saw my expression change; she walked up to me and placed her arm around my shoulder comfortingly. “I know,” she said softly, “how much you were looking forward to it, Jim. I was looking forward to singing that duet with you, too.” “Really?” I asked. “Really. You’re a terrific singer. Who wouldn’t want to sing a duet with you?” “I bet,” I said, “you say that to all the boys.” She laughed. My heart jumped as it usually did when she laughed. A thought clicked in my brain: What was it I’d written just a while ago? You are the one person who has the ability to brighten up a sour day. You have always managed to make me return a smile to someone else.

My mother never seemed to listen to much music, but she loved Barbara Streisand, counting The Way We Were and Yentl as two of her favorite films. I remembered how we used to sing the song "Tell Him" together, and skipped through the album until I found it on track four. "Remember this?" I laughed, turning up the volume. It's a duet between Babe and Celine Dion, two powerhouse divas joining together for one epic track. Celine plays the role of a young woman afraid to confess her feelings to the man she loves, and Barbara is her confidant, encouraging her to take the plunge. "I'm scared, so afraid to show I care... Will he think me weak, if I tremble when I speak?" Celine begins. When I was a kid my mother used to quiver her lower lip for dramatic effect when she sang the word "tremble." We would trade verses in the living room. I was Barbara and she was Celine, the two of us adding interpretive dance and yearning facial expressions to really sell it. "I've been there, with my heart out in my hand..." I'd join in, a trail of chimes punctuating my entrance. "But what you must understand, you can't let the chance to love him pass you by!" I'd exclaim, prancing from side to side, raising my hand to urge my voice upward, showcasing my exaggerated vocal range. Then, together, we'd join in triumphantly. "Tell him! Tell him that the sun and moon rise in his eyes! Reach out to him!" And we'd ballroom dance in a circle along the carpet, staring into each other's eyes as we crooned along to the chorus. My mom let out a soft giggle from the passenger seat and we sang quietly the rest of the way home. Driving out past the clearing just as the sun went down, the scalloped clouds flushed with a deep orange that made it look like magma.

The only point that everyone I spoke with in Rome agrees upon is that Armando al Pantheon is one of the city's last true trattorie. Given the location, Claudio and his family could have gone the way of the rest of the neighborhood a long time ago and mailed it in with a handful of fresh mozzarella and prosciutto. But he's chosen the opposite path, an unwavering dedication to the details- the extra steps that make the oxtail more succulent, the pasta more perfectly toothsome, the artichokes and favas and squash blossoms more poetic in their expression of the Roman seasons. "I experiment in my own small ways. I want to make something new, but I also want my guests to think of their mothers and grandmothers. I want them to taste their infancy, to taste their memories. Like that great scene in Ratatouille." I didn't grow up on amatriciana and offal, but when I eat them here, they taste like a memory I never knew I had. I keep coming back. For the cacio e pepe, which sings that salty-spicy duet with unrivaled clarity, thanks to the depth charge of toasted Malaysian peppercorns Claudio employs. For his coda alla vaccinara, as Roman as the Colosseum, a masterpiece of quinto quarto cookery: the oxtail cooked to the point of collapse, bathed in a tomato sauce with a gentle green undertow of celery, one of Rome's unsung heroes. For the vegetables: one day a crostini of stewed favas and pork cheek, the next a tumble of bitter puntarelle greens bound in a bracing anchovy vinaigrette. And always the artichokes. If Roman artichokes are drugs, Claudio's are pure poppy, a vegetable so deeply addictive that I find myself thinking about it at the most inappropriate times. Whether fried into a crisp, juicy flower or braised into tender, melting submission, it makes you wonder what the rest of the world is doing with their thistles.

But we have, if not our understanding, our own experience, and it feels to me sealed, inviolable, ours. We have a last, deep week together, because Wally is not on morphine yet, because he has just enough awareness, just enough ability to communicate with me. I’m with him almost all day and night- little breaks, for swimming, for walking the dogs. Outside it snows and snows, deeper and deeper; we seem to live in a circle of lamplight. I rub his feet, make him hot cider. All week I feel like we’re taking one another in, looking and looking. I tell him I love him and he says I love you, babe, and then when it’s too hard for him to speak he smiles back at me with the little crooked smile he can manage now, and I know what it means. I play music for him, the most encompassing and quiet I can find: Couperin, Vivaldi, the British soprano Lesley Garret singing arias he loved, especially the duet from Lakme: music of freedom, diving, floating. How can this be written? Shouldn’t these sentences simply be smithereened apart, broken in a hurricane? All that afternoon he looks out at us though a little space in his eyes, but I know he sees and registers: I know that he’s loving us, actively; if I know nothing else about this man, after nearly thirteen years, I know that. I bring all the animals, and then I sit there myself, all afternoon, the lamps on. The afternoon’s so quiet and deep it seems almost to ring, like chimes, a cold, struck bell. I sit into the evening, when he closes his eyes. There is an inaudible roaring, a rush beneath the surface of things, beneath the surface of Wally, who has now almost no surface- as if I could see into him, into the great hurrying current, that energy, that forward motion which is life going on. I was never this close to anyone in my life. His living’s so deep and absolute that it pulls me close to that interior current, so far inside his life. And my own. I know I am going to be more afraid than I have ever been, but right now I am not afraid. I am face to face with the deepest movement in the world, the point of my love’s deepest reality- where he is most himself, even if that self empties out into no one, swift river hurrying into the tumble of rivers, out of individuality, into the great rushing whirlwind of currents. All the love in the world goes with you.

He took a breath. He could feel his anxiety fade; he could feel himself returning to who he was. 'But would you sing with me?' Every morning for the past two months, they had been singing with each other in preparation for Duets. In the film, his character and the character's wife led an annual Christmas pageant, and both he and the actress playing his wife would be performing their own vocals. The director had sent him a list of songs to work on, and Jude had been practicing with him: Jude took the melody, and he took the harmony. 'Sure,' Jude said. 'Our usual?' For the past week, they'd been working on 'Adeste Fideles,' which he would have to sing a cappella, and for the past week, he'd been pitching sharp at the exact same point, at 'Venite adoremus,' right in the first stanza. He'd wince every time he did it, hearing the error, and Jude would shake his head at him and keep going, and he'd follow him until the end. 'You're overthinking it,' Jude would say. 'When you go sharp, its because you're concentrating too hard on staying on key; just don't think about it, Willem, and you'll get it.' That morning, though, he felt certain he'd get it right. He gave Jude the bunch of herbs, which he was still holding, and Jude thanked him, pinching its little purple flowers between his fingers to release its perfume. 'I think it's a kind of perilla,' he said, and held his fingers up for Willem to smell. 'Nice,' he said, and they smiled at each other. And so Jude began, and he followed, and he made it through without going sharp. And at the end of the song, just after the last note, Jude immediately began singing the next song on the list, 'For Unto Us a Child Is Born,' and after that, 'Good King Wenceslas,' and again and again, Willem followed. His voice wasn't as full as Jude's, but he could tell in those moments that it was good enough, that it was maybe better than good enough: he could tell it sounded better with Jude's, and he closed his eyes and let himself appreciate it. They were still singing when the doorbell chimed with their breakfast, but as he was standing, Jude put his hand on his wrist, and they remained there, Jude sitting, he standing, until they had sung the last words of the song, and only after they had finished did he go to answer the door. Around him, the room was redolent of the unknown herb he'd found, green and fresh and yet somehow familiar, like something he hadn't known he had liked until it had appeared, suddenly and unexpectedly, in his life.

You’re going to feel stretched and sore. Muscles you never knew you had are gonna ache and burn, Firefly, but I promise you this: I will never, ever hurt your heart. I’ll wrap it up in cotton wool if you’ll let me. Entrust it to me, and it’ll be my honor to defend it. I’ll make it sing in your chest. And if it ever stops singing for me, if I ever stop making it beat a little too fast, a little too wildly, I promise I’ll give it back unscathed. You have my word.

Have I told you lately that I love you?” “No, but if you sing that song to me, I’m going to reach through this phone and bitch slap you.

Hope is like a bird that senses the dawn and carefully starts to sing in the darkness…

And then we’re dancing, while he sings to me.

My name is Harmony,” she said softly. Of course, it was. She was the song running through my head for months, over and over, like a broken record. I couldn’t get enough.

Little Song, I will spank that ass if you call me Mr. Langston again,” I growled.

Darlin’ you’ve done something to me because I can’t seem to get you out of my head.

I want to know the name of the mother fucker who hurt my little song, who made her afraid to sing.

This is also, eventually, me getting down on one knee and putting my ring on your finger. This would be us starting a family, because I do want children, always have. If you don’t, I’ll learn how to deal, because that’s how much I fucking want you. That’s how much I want this, Harmony. You weren’t a part of my plan, but I have been thanking the heavens above every single day for hearing your cry for help.

You needed me, and I came, baby. I’ll always come. Don’t give a fuck who I gotta go through. You call, I come.

I’m poison to cowboys, Mason.” He shook his head again, his throat bobbing. “How can you be poison when you’re my cure?” he asked.

Newsflash: this cowboy wasn’t going away. Even if he was fighting for his life, he wasn’t going away.

God ain’t here, baby. If you wanted God, you should’ve stayed away from cowboys,” he ground out as he snapped his hips again, pulling out of me and thrusting back in. “Ironic, seeing as how your wet little pussy is the closest thing to heaven I’ve ever fucking felt.

Me and Arceus. We’re going to sing a duet.” Arceus spat out his carrot as he heard Cindy’s sentence. “W-what?

I’m the guy who’ll have you waking up on a bare mattress because we fucked the sheets off it in the middle of the night. I’m the guy who can’t sing a tune to save my soul, but I’d tell you every single day of my life how much you mean to me. So, before you make your decision, you need to know everything it entails.

The best partnerships—whether in life or the kitchen—start with mutual respect and a touch of tension. The spice... that’s what makes the dish sing.

DYSTOPIA Dark, early streets and high walls of empty houses a lonesome bird singing a hollow duet with its own echo - autumn feels like spring once you have lost everything and stand with nothing to hold onto at winter's edge - walkways glooming in buzzing orange neon light imitating fallen leaves, making the city's concrete jungle a forest - soon November is here, crawling along the pavement and dulling the grey of the ruins they call buildings - sudden flickering accompanied by loud buzzing: the lights went out while winter's edge cuts violently through the streets & building cracks - the bird stopped singing.

When I turn eight, I don’t get any birthday cards or a cake like the other kids in the orphanage—I sit under the bed with a drawing of my spider and imagine a crowd of people singing happy birthday to me, and we blow out candles that I draw. I close my eyes and make a wish. I wish someone would choose me.

Banish play and laughter from the bed of love and you may let in a false goddess. She will be even falser than the Aphrodite of the Greeks; for they, even while they worshipped her, knew that she was "laughter-loving." The mass of the people are perfectly right in their conviction that Venus is a partly comic spirit. We are under no obligation at all to sing all our love-duets in the throbbing, world-without-end, heart-breaking manner of Tristan and Isolde; let us often sing like Papageno and Papagena instead.

This was the kack’s cradle, icky-poo’s bassinet. It was Death and Diarrhea, singing duet.

I should no more lay it down as a general rule that women write better letters than men, than that they sing better duets, or draw better landscapes. In every power, of which taste is the foundation, excellence is pretty fairly divided between the sexes.

What about ‘The Girl I Left Behind’?” Abigail suggested. “I found the music in the piano bench.” She had heard that when soldiers used to leave the post, heading for battle, the company band would play that song. Oliver shook his head. “I don’t want to leave my girl behind. I want her by my side.” He gave Abigail a look so filled with longing that a lump formed in her stomach. Oh no, Oliver. You don’t mean it. You know I’m not your girl, and I won’t ever be. Oblivious to the thoughts that set Abigail’s insides churning, Charlotte nodded vigorously. “That shouldn’t stop us from singing it,” she insisted. “It’s a pretty song.” And it was. Were it not for her concerns that Oliver wanted something she could not give, Abigail could have spent hours listening to him and her sister, for their voices blended beautifully. At the end of the evening, Abigail accompanied Oliver to the door. Though she hoped he would simply say good night as he had before, the way he cleared his throat and the uneasiness she saw on his face made Abigail fear that her hopes would not be realized. Perhaps if she kept everything casual, he would take the cue. “Thank you for coming,” she said as they walked onto the front porch. “Charlotte always enjoys your duets.” “And you?” They were only two words, but Oliver’s voice cracked with emotion as he pronounced them. Please, Oliver, go home. Don’t say something you’ll regret. Though the plea was on the tip of her tongue, Abigail chose a neutral response. “I enjoy listening to both of you.” Oliver stroked his nose in a gesture Abigail had learned was a sign of nervousness. “That’s not what I meant. I hope you enjoy my company as much as I do yours. I look forward to these visits all day.” His voice had deepened, the tone telling Abigail he was close to making a declaration. If only she could spare him the inevitable pain of rejection. “It’s good to have friends,” she said evenly. Oliver shook his head. “You know I want to be more than your friend. I want to marry you.” “I’m sorry.” And she was. Though Ethan claimed Oliver bounced back from rejection, she hated being the one to deliver it. “You know marriage is not possible. Woodrow . . .” Abigail hesitated as she tried and failed to conjure his image. “Woodrow isn’t here.” Oliver completed the sentence. “I am. I lo—” She would not allow him to continue. While it was true that Oliver’s visits helped lift Charlotte’s spirits and filled the empty space left by Jeffrey’s absence, Abigail could not let him harbor any false hopes. “Good night, Lieutenant Seton.” Perhaps the use of his title would tell him she regarded him as a friend, nothing more. What appeared to be sadness filled Oliver’s eyes as his smile faded. “Is there no hope for me?” Abigail shook her head slowly. “I’m afraid not.” He stood for a moment, his lips flattened, his breathing ragged. At last, he reached out and captured her hand in his. Raising it to his lips, Oliver pressed a kiss to the back. “Good night, Miss Harding,” he said as he released her hand and walked away.

When I reach the second verse, Flynn joins in, experimenting with some kind of weird harmony. As we sing our rather unique version of On My Own, it strikes me that, growing up, this is one thing I never imagined myself doing. Sitting on a bed in a psychiatric hospital with my manic-depressive boyfriend, singing duets on a ropey guitar. But strangely, right now, after everything else that has happened, it doesn’t seem so bad.

Milton did his best to keep up, which is to say, he lagged behind, baying like a mortally wounded basset hound. The Fausters were to singing as Napoleon was to Extreme Frisbee. Milton’s Pang gullet only made things worse, drawing out each tortured “note” until it whimpered for release. Mr. Presley pulled the emergency brake on their duet. “We’ve all got talent, son,” he consoled. “Some folks just got to dig deeper than others to find it. Now, let’s give someone else a chance. You”—he waved his diamond-ringed fingers lazily toward Virgil—“step on up and show us what you’ve got.” Virgil rose nervously, his metal chair sighing with relief, and trudged up to the stage as Milton shambled off. Ever the good friend, Virgil tried to high-five Milton after his disastrous debut, but due to Milton’s Pang-suited delayed reaction, he just ended up slapping him in the head. “Sorry,” Virgil mumbled to his friend as he stood before the chalkboard. “Just follow my lead, son, and relax,” Mr. Presley slurred supportively. Mr. Presley began to mournfully croon. “Au signal du plaisir, Dans la chambre du drille, Tu peux bien entrer fille, Mais non fille en sortir …” Virgil pulled in a great breath and began to sing. “Bonne nuit, hélas! Ma petite, bonne nuit. Près du moment fatal.” In a word, Virgil’s voice was stunning. In another word, he was a virtuoso. In four more words, Milton was very surprised. Virgil’s thrilling spectacle of pitch and tone was like a vocal fireworks display, and his breath control left the rest of the class breathless. “Fais grande résistance, S’il ne t’offre d’avance Un anneau conjugale.” Riding

because that kind of heroine will sooner or later end up singing a duet with Mr. Bluebird and other forest creatures and then there’s nothing for it but a flamethrower.

It’s then I realize he’s serenading me, singing to me, and the song represents us.

We must not attempt to find an absolute in the flesh. Banish play and laughter from the bed of love and you may let in a false goddess. She will be even falser than the Aphrodite of the Greeks; for they, even while they worshipped her, knew that she was "laughter-loving". The mass of the people are perfectly right in their conviction that Venus is a partly comic spirit. We are under no obligation at all to sing all our love-duets in the throbbing, world-without-end, heart-breaking manner of Tristan and Isolde; let us often sing like Papageno and Papagena instead.

Sorry’s just a word to try to get out of something, to dodge trouble if you’ve been caught out. Sorry’s a five-letter disgrace that shouldn’t even need to be used. It should be abolished from the fucking dictionary. Actions do speak louder than words, and if she’s as sorry as she makes out in her voicemails, then why does she sometimes look happy? Why is she going out partying with her friends? Kissing guys who—shockingly—vanish days later? Why does she dance around her apartment, singing ridiculous songs about love? Why is she living her life without me? If the bitch is sorry, then why is she only looking me up on the internet and not hunting for me? Why isn’t she looking for me?

We see this even more in Seven Brides For Seven Brothers (1954), with Mercer again at MGM, collaborating with composer Gene De Paul. This one has a real Broadway score, every number embedded in the characters’ attitudes. Ragged, bearded, buckskinned Howard Keel has come to town to take a wife, and a local belle addresses him as “Backwoodsman”: it’s the film’s central image, of rough men who must learn to be civilized in the company of women. The entire score has that flavor—western again, rustic, primitive, lusty. “Bless Yore Beautiful Hide,” treating Keel’s tour of the Oregon town where he seeks his bride, sounds like something Pecos Bill wrote with Calamity Jane. When the song sheet came out, the tune was marked “Lazily”—but that isn’t how Keel sings it. He’s on the hunt and he wants results, and, right in the middle of the number, he spots Jane Powell chopping wood and realizes that he has found his mate. But he hasn’t, not yet. True, she goes with him, looking forward to love and marriage. But her number, “Wonderful, Wonderful Day,” warns us that she is of a different temperament than he: romantic, vulnerable, poetic. They don’t suit each other, especially when he incites his six brothers to snatch their intended mates. Not court them: kidnap them. “Sobbin’ Women” (a pun on the Sabine Women of the ancient Roman legend, which the film retells, via a story by Stephen Vincent Benét) is the number outlining the plan, in more of Keel’s demanding musical tone. But the six “brides” are horrified. Their number, in Powell’s pacifying tone, is “June Bride,” and the brothers in turn offer “Lament” (usually called “Lonesome Polecat”), which reveals that they, too, have feelings. That—and the promise of good behavior—shows that they at last deserve their partners, whereupon each brother duets with each bride, in “Spring, Spring, Spring.” And we note that this number completes the boys’ surrender, in music that gives rather than takes. Isn’t

Still, both Rent and Spring Awakening ultimately use gay characters to bolster heteronormativity. Angel serves as the emotional touchstone of Rent, endlessly generous and hopeful, caring and sensitive. All mourn his death, which compels the other characters to look at their lives and choices. That Angel’s death enables the other characters to learn about themselves replicates a typical (tired) trope in which an Other (usually a person of color or a person with a disability) aids in the self-actualization of the principal character. Also, Collins and Angel have the most loving and healthy relationship, which the musical needs to eliminate so as not to valorize the gay male couple above all else. In addition, Joanne and Maureen sing a lively number, “Take Me or Leave Me,” but the musical doesn’t take their relationship seriously. Maureen is presented as a fickle, emotionally abusive, yet irresistible lover (Joanne and Mark’s duet, “The Tango Maureen”) and a less-than-accomplished artist (her “The Cow Jumped over the Moon” is a parody of performance art).15 In contrast, Mimi and Roger’s relationship lasts through the end of the musical, since Mimi comes back to life. This choice, one of the few that differs from Puccini’s La Bohème (which provides the primary situational basis for Rent), shows how beholden twentieth-century musicals—even tragedies—are to the convention of a heterosexually happy ending.

Good night, Bray,” Mia says, amusement in her voice. “Night, Mia.” “Good night, Drew,” she sings. “Night, beautiful.” “Good night, Ashy C.” “Night, MiMi.” I drift off with Brayden wrapped around me like a goddamn koala bear, Mia nuzzled against my neck, and Drew’s hand in mine. If this is a dream, I don’t want to wake up.

Rent creates new possibilities for characters’ sexualities in musicals by representing multiple gay and lesbian characters with frank and casual openness. Rent is peopled with a gay male couple (Angel and Collins) and a lesbian couple (Maureen and Joanne) and it takes those sexualities for granted in the musical’s world of NYC’s East Village circa 1990. Rent’s structure—a single protagonist, Mark, surrounded by a close-knit community—borrows formal conventions of ensemble musicals of the late 1960s and 1970s, including Hair, Company, Godspell, and A Chorus Line. This structure enables the musical to nod to nonheterosexual identities and relationships, an ideological gesture that speaks to its (successful) intention to address musical theater’s wide range of spectators and even make them feel politically progressive. This device of including a few gay characters in a community-based story is repeated with the gay male couples in Avenue Q and Spring Awakening, and perhaps foretells a musical theater future with a more consistent nod to gay people (or gay men, at least).14 Still, both Rent and Spring Awakening ultimately use gay characters to bolster heteronormativity. Angel serves as the emotional touchstone of Rent, endlessly generous and hopeful, caring and sensitive. All mourn his death, which compels the other characters to look at their lives and choices. That Angel’s death enables the other characters to learn about themselves replicates a typical (tired) trope in which an Other (usually a person of color or a person with a disability) aids in the self-actualization of the principal character. Also, Collins and Angel have the most loving and healthy relationship, which the musical needs to eliminate so as not to valorize the gay male couple above all else. In addition, Joanne and Maureen sing a lively number, “Take Me or Leave Me,” but the musical doesn’t take their relationship seriously. Maureen is presented as a fickle, emotionally abusive, yet irresistible lover (Joanne and Mark’s duet, “The Tango Maureen”) and a less-than-accomplished artist (her “The Cow Jumped over the Moon” is a parody of performance art).15 In contrast, Mimi

Please, Pup, eat,” he swipes his thumb across my chin, “dance, sing, smile.

Meggie fell for a priest. I fell for a prophet. We declared war on their calling and cause, and neither of us won. But I’m keeping my love story, not because it included both martyr and sacrifice, or because it’s the story I wanted, it’s because I would never rewrite it. And I would live it all over again just for the chance to sing with him.

I dreamed I was watching a Michael Jackson concert, and then I was onstage with Michael Jackson, and we were singing this duet, and I could not remember the words for ‘The Girl Is Mine.’ Oh, man, it was so embarrassing, I—

Except it made us look as if we were about to break out into song – a duet by Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers. Edie burst out laughing. Before I could stop myself, I started singing ‘Islands in the Stream’.

I promise you this: I will never, ever hurt your heart. I’ll wrap it up in cotton wool if you’ll let me. Entrust it to me, and it’ll be my honor to defend it. I’ll make it sing in your chest. And if it ever stops singing for me, if I ever stop making it beat a little too fast, a little too wildly, I promise I’ll give it back unscathed. You have my word.

That was beautiful," she breathed aloud. Of course she had sung duets with the greatest mer singers, male and female, ones who were hundreds of years older than she with voices trained for as long. Somehow what she had just done with Eric was far more powerful and beautiful. All with no audience except for the sea grass, the water, and the wind.

If you feel like singing, sing, Tra-la-la your cares away, There's something about giving out with a song,, Makes you belong, Helps you to find a peace of mindful day. If you feel like humming, hum, Fiddle-dee dee da dee dum, Supposin' you do-re-mi slightly off key, Ev'ryone can't be a "Bing," Tell your friends to go places If they start making faces If you feel like singing, sing. If you feel like singing, sing, Tra-la-la your cares away, There's something about giving out with a song,, Makes you belong, Helps you to find a peace of mindful day. If you feel like humming, hum, Fiddle-dee dee da dee dum, Just look in the mirror and do a duet, And raise your voices aloft. Don't move out of your dwelling If your neighbors start yelling, If you can't sing good, sing soft. La-dee-da, la-dee-da, When your luck is in need of repair, La-dee-da, don't you care? Where you are or what time it is Whose tune or whose rhyme it is, It mustn't necessarily be any anniversary Or be an extra-special event, If you feel like singing, sing, Tra-la-la, fiddle-dee, la-dee-da Sing to your heart's content.

The water called. Like a siren on a foggy night, singing beautifully to lonely boaters, luring them closer. Promising companionship but ultimately dragging them deep into the dark depths until life faded away and the onyx, cavernous water swallowed them completely.