'Alissa' by Andre Gide for voice and piano sung by Margaret Field-Hyde (soprano) with Michael Mullinar (piano)

Alissa is a setting for voice and piano by Darius Milhaud of passages from Andre Gide's novel La Porte etroite, originally written in 1913 and revised in 1931. The novel is concerned with the love of Alissa for her cousin Jerome. Being of an ascetic nature she renounces this love, preferring to live, and to die, in a state of 'single blessedness.' The work consists of eight sections, the first six of which, drawn mainly from letters and dialogue, suggest Alissa's reserved attitude to Jerome. Then, after an instrumental prelude, fragments of her journal are sung, expressing her inmost thoughts. The work opens with a setting of the words 'Strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. I would be among them... '
(Harold Rutland)