Les nuits d'été (Summer Nights), Op. 7, is a song cycle by the French composer Hector Berlioz. It is a setting of six poems by Théophile Gautier. The cycle, completed in 1841, was originally for soloist and piano accompaniment. Berlioz orchestrated one of the songs in 1843, and did the same for the other five in 1856. The cycle was neglected for many years, but during the 20th century it became, and has remained, one of the composer's most popular works. The full orchestral version is more frequently performed in concert and on record than the piano original. The theme of the work is the progress of love, from youthful innocence to loss and finally renewal.
Berlioz and the poet Théophile Gautier were neighbours and friends. Gautier wrote, "Berlioz represents the romantic musical idea … unexpected effects in sound, tumultuous and Shakespearean depth of passion." It is possible that Berlioz read Gautier's collection La comédie de la mort (The Comedy of Death) before its publication in 1838. Gautier had no objection to his friend's setting six poems from that volume, and Berlioz began in March 1840. The title Nuits d'été was Berlioz's invention, and it is not clear why he chose it: the first song is specifically set in spring rather than summer. The writer Annagret Fauser suggests that Berlioz may have been influenced by the preface to a collection of short stories by his friend Joseph Méry, Les nuits de Londres, in which the author writes of summer nights in which he and his friends sat outside until dawn telling stories. In a 1989 study of Berlioz, D Kern Holoman suggests that the title is an allusion to Shakespeare, whose works Berlioz loved.
Nuits (also known, though unofficially, as Nuits-sur-Armançon) is a commune in the Yonne department in Burgundy in north-central France.
Nuits, also known as the Cottenet–Brown House, is an Italian villa-style house located in the Ardsley-on-Hudson section of the village of Irvington, New York, United States. It is a stone Italian villa-style house built in the mid-19th century. In 1977 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
It is the only surviving example of the early residential architecture of Detlef Lienau. Built for Francis Cottenet, a wealthy New York merchant, it was later owned and renovated by Cyrus West Field, John Jacob Astor III and Manhattan College. It remains a private residence.
Francis Cottenet, the first resident and owner of the property, came to the U.S. from France in 1822 and started an import-export business, Cottenet & Co., in New York. After 30 years, he contracted Detlef Lienau, one of a number of European-born architects working in America, to design a riverside villa for him. It was originally located on 65 acres (26 ha), the sole house between the Albany Post Road (now US 9) and the river in what has since become the Ardsley-on-Hudson section of Irvington.