Clair de lune (Fauré) Clair de lune (Fauré) "Clair de lune", ("Moonlight") Op. 46 No 2, is a song by Gabriel Fauré, composed in 1887 to words by Paul Verlaine. The pianist Graham Johnson writes that it closes Fauré's second period and opens the doors into his third. Johnson notes that it is "for many people the quintessential French mélodie". The lyric is from Verlaine's early collection "Fêtes galantes" (1869). It inspired not only Fauré but Claude Debussy, who set it in 1881 and wrote a well known piano piece inspired by it in 1891. Fauré's 1887 setting is for voice and piano; in
The Secret of the Selenites gusts of wind; the fleet-footed Cavallo; and Hercules, who is a strong as his namesake. They board a tall-masted ship, the "Clair de Lune", and deliberately sail into a fierce storm. By inflating a trio of hot air balloons and riding a waterspout high into the air, the ship takes flight and leaves Earth. Arriving at the moon, the "Clair de Lune" descends into a lunar crater where it becomes wedged. The adventurers fall into an underground lake and are attacked by swimming monsters, but are rescued by flying creatures and soon meet the Selenites, who are humanoid but have