Make Believe, Show Boat 1927 Broadway version, by Jerome Kern & Oscar Hammerstein II

Full 1927 Broadway version in the original key, albeit performed as a solo. Often, "Make Believe" is performed and published in an abbreviated version, but this is the full song! We can really hear Jerome Kern's operatic ambitions for Show Boat; Make Believe has a total of 4 different musical themes and quickly segues between meters and keys. However, Show Boat still maintained many characteristics of a musical comedy, so my lighter soprano interpretation is still appropriate; I expect some regional productions' Magnolias of the 1920s and 1930s sounded somewhat similar!

Show Boat is an epochal work of the American musical theatre; its sweeping scale, Ziegfeldian spectacle, leitmotivic construction, and careful blending of song and story were, and remain, outstanding. Though Show Boat was not the first Broadway show to combine song and story in this way, it did so very well, and the first act remains one of the finest pieces of the American musical theatre repertoire. "Make Believe" is an outstanding example of the "conditional love song," a form dating back to opera but perhaps most familiar to audiences through Rodgers & Hammerstein's musicals and other midcentury Broadway works. In a conditional love song, the characters discuss love in a hypothetical sense. Structurally, it allows a love song to occur early in the musical (before the characters know each other well enough to make an unconditional declaration of love). Some other well known conditional love songs include "People Will Say We're In Love" (from Oklahoma!), "If I Loved You" (from Carousel), and "I'll Know" (from Guys and Dolls). I really enjoy this type of song, and I think some of the best musical theatre scenes are based around conditional love songs.

Lyric:

Only make believe I love you,
Only make believe that you love me.
Others find peace of mind in pretending
Couldn't you?
Couldn't I?
Couldn't we?
Make believe our lips are blending
In a phantom kiss, or two, or three.
Might as well make believe I love you,
For to tell the truth, I do.

Your pardon I pray,
'Twas too much to say
The words that betray my heart.
We only pretend,
You do not offend
In playing a lover's part.

The game of just supposing
Is the sweetest game I know.
Our dreams are more romantic
Than the world we see
And if the things we dream about
Don't happen to be so,
That's just an unimportant technicality.

Though the cold and brutal fact is
You and I have never met,
We need not mind convention's P's and Q's.
If we put our thoughts in practice
We can banish all regret
Imagining most anything we choose.

We could make believe I love you,
We could make believe that you love me.
Others find peace of mind in pretending
Couldn't you?
Couldn't I?
Couldn't we?
Make believe our lips are blending
In a phantom kiss, or two, or three.
Might as well make believe I love you,
For to tell the truth, I do.