Some Enchanted Evening (South Pacific)

South Pacific opened in New York in April 1949 and ran for nearly two thousand performances. Some Enchanted Evening is Emile de Becque's first song and the show's signature — a wide, slow melody that Rodgers is said to have written in about five minutes, set to a lyric by Hammerstein about recognising a stranger across a crowded room. Ezio Pinza, an opera bass at the end of a Metropolitan career, sang it, and the song made him a Broadway star at fifty-seven.