Broadway
Anniversary Fever
The erudite and comprehensive liner notes for the Masterworks Broadway 50th Anniversary Edition of The Sound of Music open with the arresting quote: “Audrey Hepburn as Maria von Trapp?” Hooked me, that’s for sure. The notes detail how the composition of the show proceeded, from Paramount Pictures seeking to make a feature film [...]
Points West (Side)
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Lately Sony has been inundating me with a whole burning mass of excellent nostalgia in the form of records [...]
West Side Story, Part Uno
In a graceful Third Act move, librettist and director Arthur Laurents decided to stage his massive hit West Side Story in a less candied-up version for a post-9/11 New York. Grit returns, and the new Masterworks Broadway recording certainly captures that—commencing with an open throttle reading of the prologue replete with racial epithets in [...]
At Last, Allegro!
As an aficionado of Broadway, there are certain shows one can find out a lot about without knowing. For example, if you know Kurt Weill’s stage works (not his operas, or his hybrid pieces, but his American Theatre pieces) you know Lady in the Dark or Street Scene, but you don’t have any chance of [...]
Last Bow to Broadway: The American Musical
By Daniel Felsenfeld
I’d say that disc two of Broadway: The American Musical is a great outline of commercial theatre coming into its own. It was the era of true greats throwing their first stones: Leonard Bernstein (here represented for On the Town and the inimitable West Side Story, about which more later of course) and [...]
I Love Kristin Chenoweth!
By Daniel Felsenfeld
Holiday records are not really my bag, for the most part. Maybe it is because I am from Los Angeles and Jewish (though as I type this, I think of Christmas as being a weirdly West Coast phenomenon; I think of the Christmas scenes from Almost Famous and the Christmas record of [...]
The Golden Age of Broadway
By Daniel Felsenfeld
Alright, going back. The so-called “Golden Age” of Broadway is gorgeously summarized by the third disc of Broadway: The American Musical. This collection of great great songs is a snapshot of the era where Broadway led the popular culture rather than the subsequent vice-versa. It opens with a legendary performance: [...]
Broadway’s Most Complicated Era
By Daniel Felsenfeld
Disc Four of the Broadway: The American Musical is the most confusing, simply because of its range. This was the 1960s and 70s, and things really began to change. For one thing, the physical place of Broadway in those days, Times Square, was a mess, a horror show of [...]
Broadway: The American Musical
By Daniel Felsenfeld
It seems as the Broadway Musical wanes to what many people would consider a close (insofar as it is a part of the cultural dialogue—how many times has Ben Brantley written in the Times of his longing to return to the era where Broadway led pop rather than today’s vice-versa?) retrospective adds to [...]
The Hat
By Daniel Felsenfeld
If I had to pick one Sondheim show that speaks most directly to me, it would absolutely be Sunday in the Park With George, the brilliantly-conceived show (written with James Lapine) wherein the Tableau of George Seraut’s Sunday on the Island of Le grande jatte becomes especially vivant. Characters emerge from the [...]