The play Écoute: pieces of Reynaldo Hahn is not a history lesson audience members can access on Wikipedia. Rather, it is an intimate meeting with an influential French mélodie composer.

“Sometimes with the creative artist whom you enjoy, the more you know about the artist, the less you like the artist’s work,” said Gary Briggle, the director of opera for the UI School of Music. “It’s the flipside in this case. The richer knowledge you have of Reynaldo Hahn, the more you appreciate him.”

Norman Spivey, the commissioner of the one-man play, has finally realized his longtime desire to converge his interest in music and theater with his love of the French art song. Among 40 performances nationwide, Spivey will perform Écoute: pieces of Reynaldo Hahn at 7:30 p.m. today in 1670 University Capitol Centre. Admission is free.

“There’s a great deal of laughter in the play, and that’s what [Hahn’s] music sounds like,” said Susan Russell, the playwright and director of Écoute. “I figured this guy was totally intense and yet had a big grin on his face while writing his music.”

Écoute is not merely an introspective look at a popular salon-parlor musician. The play includes Spivey’s 14 favorite Hahn songs in an effort to relive la Belle Époque in France at the turn of the 20th century. Spivey also impersonates the promiscuous French actress Sarah Bernhardt and dedicates songs to the tempestuous writer Marcel Proust.

“It’s a love story among three people,” Russell said. “This man [Reynaldo] writes about a love in which he can hardly breathe.”

Russell has seen Spivey stage Écoute on three occasions, and each performance has sparked a different response. Depending on the relationship that Spivey forms with his audiences, he may reveal a more flirtatious Hahn one night or nurture a more conservative Hahn the next.

“The most satisfying performances for me have been the ones where the audiences are engaged and responsive,” Spivey wrote in an e-mail. “It then becomes more like a conversation.”

Russell dedicated herself to bringing Hahn’s life story out of a strictly biographical world. Her purpose was to illuminate the essence of Hahn as a “tour de force” vessel of love.

“I am loved, and for that, I’m forgiven for all things,” Russell said, quoting the French composer. She said that Hahn visited people’s homes to play his music and his listeners eventually were reduced to sobs because of the obtainable beauty his songs evoked.

“Sometimes, a person comes upon a writer or composer who he suddenly realizes that there’s something going on in the heart of the artist that’s similar to what’s going on in his own life,” Briggle said.

This is what happened for Spivey in his research of Hahn’s life and relationships. Spivey wrote that the more he read about Hahn, the greater he reflected on Hahn’s thinking, creativity, relationships, and culture.

“[Spivey] and I had so much fun putting this show together,” Russell said. “And it’s evident in his performance.”

She sees Hahn as a man who lived through considerable episodes of social carnage, and yet, he carried on with flourishes of love.

“Écoute” is the French word for “listen.” But audiences don’t have to speak French to feel drawn into Spivey’s performance.

“In this play, you hear how these characters loved,” Russell said.