Perhaps it is because of their very nature that poets often seem to lead dramatic, romantic, emotional or even scandalous or dangerous lives. Certainly this was so with the three poets, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron and Paul Verlaine whose poems have been set to music by many composers. They now feature in a recital, Dangerous Romantics, to be performed by husband and wife duo Alan Hicks and Christina Wilson at Wesley Music Centre on Sunday, February 26.

Christina Wilson says, "These poets were incredibly colourful characters."

The stories of their lives indeed read like bestsellers, filled with episodes of romantic entanglements with both women and men during widespread travel. In Byron's case stoushes with the Establishment led to the Church refusing to allow a statue of him to be placed in Westminster Abbey and his adventures included encounters with the Ottoman navy during his time in Greece. Shelley was also politically active and wrote pamphlets which he distributed in hot air balloons, glass bottles and paper boats.

All three suffered tragic deaths: Shelley drowned while sailing his schooner in Italy; his close friend Byron died of a fever contracted in Missolonghi and Verlaine, who in 1873 had injured his lover, the poet and libertine, Arthur Rimbaud, by shooting him in the wrist, died as the result of drug dependence and alcoholism.

It's not surprising that these three are described as "dangerous romantics" and that they inspired intensely emotional works by many composers including Mendelssohn, Schumann, Berlioz and Chabrier as well as the six composers whose works Wilson has chosen to perform in this recital.

"What happens when a composer chooses incredibly strong poems?" Wilson asks. "It's a parallel exploration of the poet's love. The composer's melodies and harmonics extend the idea of the text. The whole thing about art song is the relationship between the verse, the text, the music."

Both Reynaldo Hahn and Gabriel Faure set Verlaine's texts to music.

"Over the years I've sung a lot of Verlaine," Wilson says. The duo will perform Hahn's Chanson's Grises, a cycle of seven songs, beginning with Chanson d'automne, in which the voice and piano parts are completely independent, and progressing through L'Heure exquise, a meeting of lovers on a moonlit night, to the final La bonne chanson. Faure made a famous setting of L'Heure exquise , but it is another selection of Faure's songs that will be performed at this recital: Clair de lune, Mandoline, En Sourdine and Prison.

Frederick Septimus Kelly was an Australian composer who spent much of his short life in England. He was only 35 when he was killed at the Battle of the Somme. Three of Kelly's songs, A Dirge, One word is too often profaned and Music when soft voices die, will be part of the program. The texts are by Percy Shelley.

"I love the whole repertoire and we want to continue to celebrate and publicise Kelly's music," Wilson says.

Last November Wilson toured to France and England with Louise Page, Tamara-Anna Cilowska and Christopher Latham, taking two concert programs of Kelly's music and launching the ABC Classic CD A Race Against Time, copies of which will be available at the recital.

"The poems are incredible texts in their own right," Wilson says.

"In France we attended the DVA wreath laying service recognising Kelly's death as an Australian fighting in the British forces at his grave in a Commonwealth Memorial Cemetery near Mesnil on the Somme."

Works by Debussy, Roger Quilter and Graeme Koehne will also be performed at this recital.

Fetes Galantes II has been described as one of Debussy's most subtle works. The three songs with texts by Verlaine invoke a world somewhere between the real and the unreal and describe a sensual world that must have been revered by Verlaine. The first song, Les ingenus, describes sexual awakening while the third, Colloque sentimental, describes a dialogue between two long dead lovers.

Two songs by Roger Quilter, Love's Philosophy and Music when soft voices die, have texts by Shelley and three poems by Byron are used by Graeme Koehne in his songs: Stanzas for Music, To Woman and She Walks in Beauty.

"I sang Stanzas for Music three years ago with a string quartet at Canberra International Music Festival," Wilson says.

The texts of the songs will be printed in the recital program and each section of the recital will be introduced by Wilson with stories to animate the extraordinary lives of the three poets who inspired so many composers.