“Lara’s Theme” is the generic name given to a leitmotif written for the film Doctor Zhivago (1965) by composer Maurice Jarre. Soon afterward, it became the basis of the song “Somewhere My Love.”
While working on the soundtrack for Doctor Zhivago, Maurice Jarre was asked by director David Lean to come up with a theme for the character of Lara, played by Julie Christie. Initially Lean had desired to use a well-known Russian song but could not locate the rights to it, and delegated responsibility to Jarre. After several unsuccessful attempts at writing it, Lean suggested to Jarre that he go to the mountains with his girlfriend and write a piece of music for her. Jarre says that the resultant piece was “Lara’s Theme”, and Lean liked it well enough to use it in numerous tracks for the film. In editing Zhivago, Lean and producer Carlo Ponti reduced or outright deleted many of the themes composed by Jarre; Jarre was angry because he felt that an over-reliance on “Lara’s Theme” would ruin the soundtrack.
Jarre’s esthetic fears proved unfounded commercially, however, as the theme became an instant success and gained fame throughout the world. By special request of Connie Francis, Paul Francis Webster later took the theme and added lyrics to it to create “Somewhere My Love”. Francis, however, retired from the project when the lyrics were presented to her because she thought of them as too “corny”. A few weeks later, Francis reconsidered her position and recorded the song nonetheless, but by then Ray Conniff had also recorded a version of his own, reaching #9 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1966. Conniff’s version of the song also topped the “Easy listening” chart in the U.S. for four weeks. Despite Conniff’s success, Francis also had her version released as a single, and although it failed to chart in the US, it became one of her biggest successes internationally, becoming one of the “Top 5” in territories such as Scandinavia and Asia. In Italy, her Italian version of the song, “Dove non so”, became her last # 1 success.
Various other versions of it have since been released. Italio-American tenor, Sergio Franchi covered the song as “Somewhere, My Love” in his 1967 RCA Victor album From Sergio – With Love. “Lara’s Theme” remains to this day one of the most recognizable movie themes ever written. A music box plays Lara’s Theme at the beginning of the film The Spy Who Loved Me
On the soundtrack album for Zhivago, there is no one track listed as “Lara’s Theme”. A variation of the piece appears in numerous sections, however. Some tracks briefly cite it, while others are composed entirely from the motif. The orchestration is varied, most notably with balalaika and orchestra.
One of the main reasons the theme is featured in so many tracks is that Lean had hired an impromptu balalaika orchestra from several Russian Orthodox Churches in Los Angeles; the musicians could only learn 16 bars of music at a time, and could not read written music. Although never credited, Edgar Stanistreet, a street musician of Philadelphia,[3] claimed that he was asked to play the song over the phone to an MGM executive, and was later taken into the studio to record.
Vocal versions include recordings by Connie Francis (in English as Somewhere, My Love, in Spanish as Sueño de Amor, and in Italian as Dove non so), by The Ray Conniff Singers (in English as Somewhere, My Love), by Karel Gott (in German as Weißt du, wohin), as well as by Les Compagnons de la Chanson and by John William (in French as La Chanson de Lara).

By Ray Conniff & The Singers

Lyrics