CRUELLY BEAUTIFUL ROMANCES

  The second CD Cruelly Beautiful Romances (Žiauriai gražūs romansai) was released in 2005. It consists of cruel Lithuanian romances of the inter-war period performed by Vytautas V. Landsbergis, Ramunė Landsbergienė, Regimantas Žitkauskas and Eimuntas Belickas.
  The cruel romances are full of charming innocence, sentiment and passion. Most of them are stories of fatal adultery and unfortunate love that end in bloody drama. At the peak of their popularity during the inter-war period of independent Lithuania in 1919–1939, these romances were taken very seriously – just like present day Indian films and Mexican melodramas. However in time they acquired a new and quite different dimension and are now perceived as songs of black humour, absurd and irony – the feelings that can never overburden the Nordic Lithuanian mentality.
  The CD also contains several folk songs and one war ballad, all of which are similar to the tradition of romance in terms of the way they sound and the stories they tell. And then there is one popular literary romance I Am Not Worthy of Your Tender Words (Aš nevertas švelnių tavo žodžių) composed by the actor Vytautas Taukinaitis with the lyrics written by Paulius Širvys.