Critical Reception
It has been called "the show's best known song" and "rousing but plaintive" Musicologist Stephen Citron wrote, "Perhaps the most unusual song in the score is a beautiful ballad of lonely prospectors hungering for their women, "They Call the Wind Maria" – not chauvinistic in this case, for each man is yearning for his own girl. Composer and conductor Lehman Engel wrote that the song "has a cowboy flavor", and commented that "In the lyric, its folk quality is accentuated." Engel concluded that "Lerner has invented an interesting kind of narration". Princeton University historian Robert V. Wells wrote that it is "a sad and wistful song about being far from home" Theater historian Don B. Wilmeth called the song "haunting", and said that it evokes "emptiness".
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