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Don Basilio
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« Reply #30 on: 12:30:23, 24-05-2008 » |
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Now I was expecting Guys and Dolls to come out top in any case. I assumed that any musical that opens with a fugue (and chorale, if a Sally Army chorus counts) must appeal to Bach lovers.
It combines wonderful humanity with a total lack of sentimentality.
More I Can Not Wish You brings a lump to my throat.
I'll Know When My Love Comes Along, Sit Down You're Rocking the Boat, the title song, If I Was A Bell, and above all the one that I was word perfect in, together with I'm Just A Girl Who Can't Say No...
Adelaide's wonderful striptease, Take Back Your Mink (I may be down, but I'm not flat as all that.)
Probably my all time fav.
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To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.
A time to weep, and a time to laugh: a time to mourn, and a time to dance
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Don Basilio
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« Reply #31 on: 12:45:29, 24-05-2008 » |
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I don't have any recordings of Can't Help Lovin Dat Man by black singers.
The whole point about the character of Julie is that she is mixed race, but passes for white in a state with miscegnation laws. She gives her origin away by singing Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man (so called in the Viking Opera Guide). "Why that's a song for coloured folk, Miss Julie. Never heard white folk sing it," says Queenie |
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To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.
A time to weep, and a time to laugh: a time to mourn, and a time to dance
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Don Basilio
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« Reply #32 on: 12:55:03, 24-05-2008 » |
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I've added two works which attracted interest.
You can change your votee.
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To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.
A time to weep, and a time to laugh: a time to mourn, and a time to dance
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Stanley Stewart
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« Reply #33 on: 13:03:50, 24-05-2008 » |
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Ay, there's the rub! "Musically interesting pre-1955 Broadway musical" - even the cut-off point is salient.
Glad it didn't proscribe 'the best musical'; please, don't let's go there.
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #34 on: 16:22:42, 24-05-2008 » |
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I'll cast a contrarian vote for Kurt Weill - although his broadway musicals weren't as successful as he'd hoped, nor did they do the kind of box office which some of the shows listed in the poll achieved... if the criterion is most musically interesting then he's up there with the best of them. STREET SCENE is probably his best-known Broadway piece, and represented his final attempt to create "the great American opera" that would be a successor to PORGY & BESS. Despite calling it an "opera" it nevertheless opened on Broadway. However, for "best single scene" I'd have no hesitation in naming "This is the life!" from LOVE LIFE (a bizarre musical which looked at the same family, the Coopers, from 1776 through the year of the piece's composition, 1948. Samuel Cooper has dumped his wife and kids and is holed-up in a hotel in NYC... but his dreams of a wild time as a newly single man (card games, drinking, girls etc) never work-out because he's too hung-up by his own guilt, and he ends-up flailing around on the floor in a drunken stupour with a bottle of whisky and photographs of a family trip to Long Island, unable even to order a room-service supper due to his own inadequacy. Fabulous music-theatre, astonishingly well written.
I'm not sure if it's breaking the rules, but Menotti's THE MEDIUM was written for Broadway, opened on Broadway and had a long and successful run there. If this work is allowed, then I'd suggest it's a strong candidate? The key to understanding the piece is to look at the date it was written, and see what the prevailing trend was? Remember, you're looking at a piece about an utterly ruthless female character - who stops at nothing to care for her daughter - who ultimately guns down a kid whilst in a whisky-induced haze... Not coincidental that in the 18 months before it opened, latest movies included SORRY, WRONG NUMBER and MILDRED PIERCE. As a lone example of 'hard-boiled' opera, it's a unique experiment.
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
- Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
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Stanley Stewart
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« Reply #35 on: 17:40:04, 24-05-2008 » |
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Music to my ears, Reiner. I went to the Opera North production of 'Love Life', at Leeds, in the early 90s, rather expecting second string Weill, as I only had selected tracks on cassette and CD; Lenya and American Theatre Songs, Kurt Weill on Broadway etc. The score contains passages of aching, intense melancholy to sit alongside 'Street Scene' and I'm surprised that ENO didn't latch on to match their fine production of the latter.
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John W
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« Reply #36 on: 19:09:25, 24-05-2008 » |
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I don't have any recordings of Can't Help Lovin Dat Man by black singers.
The whole point about the character of Julie is that she is mixed race, but passes for white in a state with miscegnation laws. She gives her origin away by singing Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man (so called in the Viking Opera Guide). "Why that's a song for coloured folk, Miss Julie. Never heard white folk sing it," says Queenie Sorry Don, yes I know that, but the song WAS recorded by black or mixed-race artistes like Bessie Brown (1928) and later by Una Mae Carlisle, Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday but can't recall hearing those, though I may have heard one or more on Humph's show over the years. John W |
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pim_derks
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« Reply #37 on: 10:23:05, 25-05-2008 » |
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I omitted Weil for the same reason as I omitted Bernstein. They are composers who had at the time a classical reputation, and I wanted to find out how the more tin-pan alley crowd fared. (In which case I could omit Gershwin - but he was tin pan alley first, whereas the other two made a classical reputation before Broadway.) I now see that I have to ignore this poll because in my humble opinion Gershwin's Girl Crazy is musically the most interesting pre-1955 Broadway musical.  |
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"People hate anything well made. It gives them a guilty conscience." John Betjeman
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John W
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« Reply #38 on: 10:46:40, 25-05-2008 » |
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pim,
Girl Crazy. I had to look that one up. Kicked off Ginger Rogers career no less! I may have seen the later film Rooney/Garland, but I know/have at least three of the songs/recordings I Got Rhythm, Embraceable You and Bidin' My Time and maybe But Not For Me but I'd have to check my shelves.
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pim_derks
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« Reply #39 on: 11:31:07, 25-05-2008 » |
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pim,
Girl Crazy. I had to look that one up. Kicked off Ginger Rogers career no less! I may have seen the later film Rooney/Garland, but I know/have at least three of the songs/recordings I Got Rhythm, Embraceable You and Bidin' My Time and maybe But Not For Me but I'd have to check my shelves. I can also recommend the overture, John! Simply the best overture written by Gershwin.  |
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"People hate anything well made. It gives them a guilty conscience." John Betjeman
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John W
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« Reply #40 on: 12:15:15, 25-05-2008 » |
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I can also recommend the overture, John! Simply the best overture written by Gershwin. Thanks pim, I would be interested in hearing the overture, though I expect in the main it is like a medley of the tunes from the show? Overtures tended to be ignored at the time, many many recordings of the popular tunes, but very little of the intros. In UK early 1930s Ray Noble penned/recorded many medley/selections of shows for HMV but not Girl Crazy I see on their site Nonesuch have issued a soundtrack. Not much information that I can find there. Is it from the Rooney/Garland film? can't link the actual page searched http://www.nonesuch.com/ |
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pim_derks
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« Reply #41 on: 12:54:39, 25-05-2008 » |
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Thanks pim, I would be interested in hearing the overture, though I expect in the main it is like a medley of the tunes from the show? Yes, it is. I made a download for you, John: http://www.sendspace.com/file/90m7nzGeorge GershwinOverture to Girl CrazyBuffalo Philhamonic conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas |
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"People hate anything well made. It gives them a guilty conscience." John Betjeman
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Don Basilio
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« Reply #42 on: 14:02:12, 25-05-2008 » |
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Pim, I'm so pleased to see you back, that I have replaced Annie Get Your Gun with Girl Crazy. Anything Irving Berlin can do, Gershwin and Kern can do better. There is no reason why I should keep it out given my stated criteria.
I am pleased to see Guys and Dolls creeping up on the outside lane (given that work's obession with betting on the gee gees, that is quite an appropriate metaphor.)
No comments on, or regret at the exclusion of Sondheim, I notice.
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To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.
A time to weep, and a time to laugh: a time to mourn, and a time to dance
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Stanley Stewart
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« Reply #43 on: 14:30:15, 25-05-2008 » |
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Sondheim is a colossus and needs a thread to himself, in due course.
"Girl Crazy" is a good substitute for 'Annie..' Indeed, my off-air video of "Girl Crazy" (1943) is on my list for DVD transfer as it is commercially unavailable. MGM gave it low budget status but upped the stakes, at the last minute, to give it a 'strike up the band' style finale. The film was released in the UK as a second feature as pre-war musicals of the 30s were dead-in-the water by this time. Garland took umbrage at Busby Berkeley's hectoring manner and declined to be directed by him after this film. Enter Vincente Minnelli and 'Meet Me In St Louis" (1944).
Yes, 'Guys and Dolls' is still addling my brains as favourite and musically interesting but "Show Boat" refuses to budge for sheer originality. Another fine revival was presented at The Adelphi, circa 1974. The DSM was a friend and I used to go backstage for the second half just to hear Cleo Laine' as Julie sing "Bill". Even at matinees she brought the house down. She'd exit and as I mimed my handclap, she'd say, "Hi, fellas. Isn't it camp?" The leading man - no names no pack drill - used to arrive in the wings proclaiming "I'm coming, my public. I'm coming!".
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John W
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« Reply #44 on: 14:36:19, 25-05-2008 » |
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pim, Many thanks for that download, much enjoyed, love those show medleys. In return, for you and Don and all on this thread, here is that original Helen Morgan (crackly 78) recording of Can't Help Lovin' Dat Manrecorded 14 Feb 1928, it was issued in USA coupled with 'Bill' but in UK it was backed with 'Ol' Man River' sung by the popular group The Revellers. Helen Morgan's Can't Help was re-issued in UK in the mid-1930's and that time with 'Bill' but I've not found that record. |
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Poll
