Belle nuit, ô nuit d'amour

A song I've been scouting for, high and low for years on end, until I found it thanks to http://twitter.com/beastoftraal

Here's a nice version of it  http://bit.ly/lCtgB

Belle nuit (Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffman)

NICKLAUSSE

Belle nuit, ô nuit d'amour,
souris à nos ivresses,
nuit plus douce que le jour,
ô belle nuit d'amour!

GIULIETTA, NICKLAUSSE

Le temps fuit et sans retour emporte nos tendresses!
Loin de cet heureux séjour, le temps fuit sans retour.
Zéphyrs embrasés, versez-nous vos caresses;
zéphyrs embrasés, versez-nous vos baisers,
Ah! Belle nuit, ô nuit d'amour, souris à nos ivresses,
nuit plus douce que le jour, ô belle nuit d'amour!

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A barcarolle (from French; also Italian barcarola, barcarole) is a folk song sung by Venetian gondoliers, or a piece of music composed in that style. In classical music, the three most famous barcarolles are those by Jacques Offenbach, from his opera The Tales of Hoffmann, Frédéric Chopin's Barcarolle in F sharp major for solo piano, and guitarist Agustin Barrios's Julia Florida.

A barcarolle is characterized by a rhythm reminiscent of the gondolier's stroke, almost invariably a moderate tempo 6/8 meter. While the most famous barcarolles are from the Romantic period, the genre was well-enough known in the 18th century for Burney to mention, in The Present State of Music in France and Italy (1771), that it was a celebrated form cherished by "collectors of good taste."

It was a popular form in opera, where the apparently artless sentimental style of the folk-like song could be put to good use: in addition to the Offenbach example, Paisiello, Weber, and Rossini wrote arias which were barcarolles, Gaetano Donizetti set the Venetian scene at the opening of Marino Faliero (1835) with a barcarolle for a gondolier and chorus, and Verdi included a barcarolle in Un Ballo in Maschera: (Richard's atmospheric "Di tu se fidele il flutto maspetta" in Act I).

Arthur Sullivan set the entry of Sir Joseph Porter's barge (also bearing his sisters, cousins and aunts) in HMS Pinafore to a barcarolle. Schubert, while not using the name specifically, used a style reminiscent of the barcarolle in some of his most famous songs, including especially his haunting "Auf dem Wasser zu singen" ("to be sung on the water"), D.774.