Advice to young singers often follows the standard line of the great French singer Claire Croiza: "Study the poem away from the music, so that you know what the words really mean." But Croiza's advice is notoriously difficult to follow when performing French m lodies. Just how do you approach a French poem? In the lyric poetry on which the m lodie is based, meaning is conveyed not just through the words but also through the poem's formal structure...