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"Some Enchanted Evening"
#1 weeks: 1
weeks: 1949-07-30
artist: Perry Como

"Some Enchanted Evening" is a show tune from the 1949 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific.

In the show, it is sung as a solo by Emile de Becque, the French plantation owner, who falls in love with the American navy nurse Nellie Forbush. In this song he sings of seizing the moment so that it won't slip away.

In the film version, the song is sung by Giorgio Tozzi, who dubbed for Rossano Brazzi.

According to the running commentary on the DVD release of South Pacific, this song provides an example of Hammerstein's use of verbs in a song. The DVD commentary mentions that Lehman Engel remembered how Oscar Hammerstein II wanted to write a song that used verbs, but waited ten years to do so before he wrote this song. The song is rich with verbs, such as "see", "hear" and "find."

Besides recordings by Ezio Pinza (original cast album) and Perry Como (biggest hit version), several other versions were recorded; see below.