Gene Kelly singing Lerner and Loewe. I’m not certain it gets much better than this. It’s from Brigadoon, sung by American hunter Tommy as he walks through the heather with the beautiful Fiona, early in the story when he and his friend have stumbled upon a village in the Scottish Highlands that is strangely not on any map. It will turn out that this is because the village of Brigadoon only appears for one day every hundred years, and that by the time night falls, Tommy will have a choice to make: stay in Brigadoon with Fiona, and leave his world behind, or go back to his world, and leave Fiona behind?
This song makes for an enchanting dance sequence for Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse, but the music itself–with Kelly’s typically flawless singing–is magical in itself. It’s awfully easy with musicals, I’ve found, to get wrapped up in the costumes and the choreography and the sets, and almost forget that there’s a tremendous amount of amazing music going on too.
Here is Gene Kelly, singing “The Heather on the Hill”.