Enchanted Evenings:The Broadway Musical from 'Show Boat' to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber Block, Geoffrey (large ebook reader .txt) 📖

specifically with the enterprising Jake; four measures before rehearsal no. 171 (Vocal score, 323) shows this theme as it opens act II, scene 3, shortly before Jake goes out into the storm that will take his life and that of his wife Clara. Finally, Gershwin assigns an orchestral motive to indicate the presence of the lawyer Frazier, who appears only in act II, scene 1, a descriptive theme with a prominent dissonant syncopated leap of a major seventh (see rehearsal no. 41 [Vocal score, 214]).

85. Note that Peter’s melody which follows Bess’s recitative is rhythmically identical to “I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin’” (Vocal score, 329–30).

86. To complete the cycle of reminiscence motives that began this scene Gershwin returns one last time to Jake’s motive (Vocal score, 357–58) before new storm music takes over to conclude the scene (359–64). The short-long rhythm of the dirge that opens act III, scene 1 (“Clara, Clara”), might also be interpreted as an augmentation of Porgy’s loneliness theme.

87. H. Wiley Hitchcock, Music in the United States, 205, and Charles Hamm, Music in the New World, 450.

Chapter 5: On Your Toes and Pal Joey

1. David Ewen, Richard Rodgers, 236 and 254.

2. Richard Rodgers, Musical Stages, 262.

3. Ibid., 71.

4. Ibid., 91. Stanley Green summarizes other innovations in Peggy-Ann: “No songs were sung within the first fifteen minutes, the scenery and costumes were changed in full view of the audience, and the first and last scenes were played in almost total darkness.” Stanley Green, Broadway Musicals Show by Show.

5. Rodgers, Musical Stages, 118.

6. Ibid., 118.

7. Pandro Berman, the man who dismissed the vaudeville-Russian ballet idea, produced in Shall We Dance (1937) a movie musical starring Astaire and Rogers (with a score and lyrics by the Gershwins) that bears more than a passing resemblance to Rodgers and Hart’s rejected conception.

8. Brooks Atkinson, “‘On Your Toes,’ Being a Musical Show with a Book and Tunes and a Sense of Humor,” New York Times, April 13, 1936, 14.

9. Atkinson, “On Your Toes,” New York Times, October 12, 1954, 24.

10. Rodgers, Musical Stages, 175.

11. Ethan Mordden, Better Foot Forward, 143.

12. On Your Toes, 1936 libretto, I-4–22. Special thanks to Tom Briggs of the Rodgers and Hammerstein Theatre Library for allowing me to examine the librettos of the 1936 and 1983 productions.

13. Ibid., I-4–30.

14. Ibid., II-2–13; 1983 libretto, 46.

15. 1936 libretto, I-5–34.

16. Ibid., II-2–13. In the 1983 libretto (30), Junior explains further: “I admit that basic off-beat appears in many cultures—but I would think that all would have to agree that American jazz has a very individual sound”; also, in the 1983 version Sergei expresses artistic as well as commercial motives for staging “Slaughter” when he acknowledges to Peggy that he finds the work “admirable.” His primary question is “can we dance it?” The problem facing the Russian ballet in 1983 is not that jazz is demeaning but whether a classical ballet company can master the stylistic nuances and comparable challenges of an alien form.

17. Frank Rich, “Theater: ‘On Your Toes,’ A ‘36 Rodgers and Hart,” New York Times, March 7, 1983, C13; reprinted in Rich, Hot Seat, 213–16.

18. Helen Dudar, “George Abbott Dusts Off a Broadway Classic.”

19. Theodore S. Chapin, On Your Toes (vocal score) (New York: Chappell 1985), 4.

20. Quotation in George Abbott, “Mister Abbott,” 177; see also, Rodgers, Musical Stages, 174.

21. Abbott, “Mister Abbott,” 177–78, and Rodgers, Musical Stages, 174.

22. Dudar, “George Abbott Dusts Off a Broadway Classic.”

23. On Your Toes, 1936 libretto, I-4–32.

24. Ibid., I-6–39.

25. Ibid., I-3–10.

26. 1983 libretto, 4.

27. 1936 libretto, I-3–8 and I-2–9.

28. The professor reveals the limitations of his own education and refinement, since it is he who mispronounces Schubert’s name. Professor Dolan also assigns the words “Dein ist mein Herz” to the wrong song (“Ständchen”). The correct answer is “Ungeduld” from Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin. It should also be noted that as late as 1983 the possibility that Schubert was gay was more of a conjecture than a scholarly argument. Thus Frankie in both 1936 and 1983 is most likely referring to Junior, not one of Schubert’s male lovers. See Maynard Solomon, “Franz Schubert and the Peacocks of Benvenuto Cellini,” 19th Century Music 12 (Spring 1989), 193–206.

29. The opening of “Goodnight Sweetheart” by Ray Noble, Jimmy Campbell, and Reg Connelly, published in 1931, also bears an unmistakable resemblance to the opening of Les Préludes.

30. By a twist of fate, in 1943 Hart collaborated with Kálmán on an unproduced musical about the French underground in World War II, Miss Underground. See Dorothy Hart and Robert Kimball, The Complete Lyrics of Lorenz Hart, 291.

31. On Your Toes, 1936 libretto, I-3–16 and 17. In 1983 the conclusion to the exchange that precedes “It’s Got to Be Love” is as follows (7–8):

JUNIOR: I’ll tell you something—and I shouldn’t say it—it’s terribly personal—I’m very fond of you.

FRANKIE: You are? Even with my derivative song?

JUNIOR: Yes, Miss Frayne.

FRANKIE: Well, in that case, why don’t you call me Frankie?

JUNIOR: All right—and you can call me Junior.

FRANKIE: All right. Yesterday some of the kids were dancing to my song and they thought it was pretty good.

JUNIOR: Well, gee Christmas, I’d like to hear it again.

FRANKIE: (Goes to bench. Gets music): O.K. That’s a fair exchange.

32. Rodgers’s sinking melody also conveys a new harmonic interpretation of an identical (albeit more extended) descending melody from the verse of the song (mm. 9–13) on the words, “color, Aquamarine or em’rald green. And …”

33. John Mauceri, Notes to On Your Toes.

34. By the time the audience witnesses the entire “Slaughter,” one of its principal tunes has been heard on several previous occasions, always in an appropriate context, e.g., in act I, scene 3, when Junior’s private rehearsal is interrupted by Frankie.

35. 1983 libretto, 19.

36. Richard Rodgers, “‘Pal Joey’: History of a Heel.” New York Times, December 30, 1951, sec. 2, 1+.

37. Rodgers, Musical Stages, 202.

38. O’Hara’s letter was reprinted with Rodgers’s jacket notes for the 1950 recording (Columbia 4364). Rodgers recalls receiving the letter in Boston in October 1939 during the try-outs of Too Many