“The Virgin With Angels”.
Artist: William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825–1905).
Date: 1900.
Current location: Petit Palais, Paris.
Source/Photographer: Art Renewal Center image
Copied from English Wikipedia to Commons.
Author: William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825–1905).
(Wikimedia Commons)
“O, Holy Night”.
Sung by Celine Dion.
Available on YouTube at
“O Holy Night” (“Cantique de Noël”) is a well-known Christmas Carol, composed by Adolphe Adam, in 1847, to the French poem “Minuit, chrétiens” (Midnight, Christians), by a wine merchant and poet, Placide Cappeau (1808–1877).
In Roquemaure, France, at the end of 1843, the Church Organ was renovated. To celebrate the event, the Parish Priest asked Cappeau, a native of Roquemaure, to write a Christmas poem. Cappeau did it, although being a professed Anti-Cleric and Atheist.
Soon after, Adam wrote the music. The Carol was premiered in Roquemaure, in 1847, by the Opera Singer Emily Laurey.
Unitarian Minister John Sullivan Dwight, Editor of “Dwight’s Journal of Music”, created a singing edition, based on Cappeau’s French Text, in 1855. In both the French original, and in the two familiar English versions of the Carol, the Text reflects on The Birth of Jesus and of Humanity’s Redemption.
