…aka, “Music to play on an old Victrola while sitting in an overstuffed chair, in a darkened room, nursing a [url/=http://www.webtender.com/db/glass/14]snifter of brandy while watching the moon shine through the open french doors, with the curtains gently billowing in the breeze.”
As you can see, I couldn’t quite squeeze all of that into a thread-title. And that’s still leaving out the paragraph about despair and existential anguish.
Now, “Un Bel Di Vedremo” from Madama Butterfly seems to be at the top of this list, obviously. And probably “Vesti la giubba” Pagliacci would be “#2.”
Your description made me think of Debussy’s Clair de Lune which makes me think of Satie and other impressionists. Then I go back to Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata.
But for my own musical tastes, in a scene such as the one you’ve described, and for the mood you indicate, I would dig out the album by Stan Getz which he did as his career was about to get back on track in the bossa nova period. Focus is tenor sax against a background of strings led by Eddie Sauter in a suite written specifically for Getz. It is Getz’s favorite of all his own records, and is a mood setting masterpiece.
Kozo, Planned Penetration (strange title, I know). A saxophone wails and soars over a sort-of electronic base - it’s hard to describe the music, but it is, above all else, very cool.