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

Molnár made a “valuable suggestion” during the New Haven tryouts, “which involved playing two scenes in one set—actually a more radical departure from the original than any change we had made” and “proved successful in pulling together a very long second act.” See Oscar Hammerstein, “Turns on a Carousel,” 1.

4. Elliot Norton, “Broadway’s Cutting Room Floor,” 80. Ewen credits Mamoulian for removing Mr. and Mrs. God from their New England living room and replacing them with a Starkeeper. Ewen, Richard Rodgers, 236.

5. “Guild Scores Again with Its ‘Carousel,’” New York World-Telegram, April 20, 1945; review excerpted in Steven Suskin, Opening Night on Broadway, 147; reprinted in New York Theatre Critics’ Reviews, vol. 6, 226. Since the first edition of Enchanted Evenings was among the guilty parties, it is imperative to note that in his recent well-researched archival study Tim Carter “found no evidence for the quite persistent story that “[This Was] A Real Nice Clambake” in Carousel derives from a song (“This Was a Real Nice Hayride”) originally intended for Oklahoma!” (Tim Carter, “Oklahoma!” The Making of an American Musical, 285n23).

6. Ward Morehouse, “‘Carousel,’ Beguiling Musical Play with Lovely Score, Opens at Majestic,” New York Sun, April 20, 1945; reprinted in New York Theatre Critics’ Reviews, vol. 6, 226–27.

7. John Chapman, “‘Carousel’ Is a Lovely, Touching Musical Drama Based on ‘Liliom,’” Daily News, April 20, 1945; quoted in Suskin, Opening Night on Broadway, 144; reprinted in New York Theatre Critics’ Reviews, vol. 6, 228.

8. Robert Garland, “‘Carousel’ Makes Bow at Majestic Theatre,” New York Journal-American, April 20, 1945; quoted in Suskin, Opening Night on Broadway, 146; reprinted in New York Theatre Critics’ Reviews, vol. 6, 227.

9. Brooks Atkinson, “The Theatre: ‘Carousel,’” New York Times, June 3, 1954, 32.

10. Rodgers, Musical Stage, 243.

11. For another interpretation of the relationship between music and drama in Carousel see Larry Stempel’s comparison between the aria “Somehow I Never Could Believe” from Weill’s Street Scene and Billy’s “Soliloquy.” Stempel observes that Hammerstein’s words and not Rodgers’s music “indicate the basic emotional change he [Billy Bigelow] undergoes in thinking about being a father.” Stempel, “Street Scene,” 327.

12. Kern’s shrewd decision to use Magnolia’s piano theme for the release of Ravenal’s song “Where’s the Mate for Me?” (Example 2.4) lets audiences know immediately that Magnolia has entered Ravenal’s consciousness and foreshadows their eventual union. At the end of Ravenal’s song Magnolia appears as if in answer to the question posed in the song’s title, and Ravenal is unable to complete his final words, “for me.” After some underscored dialogue Ravenal admits within the song “Make Believe” that his love for Magnolia is not a pretense but a reality (“For, to tell the truth, I do”). Versions of Show Boat differ on whether or not Magnolia actually says the magic words “I do” at the conclusion of their duet, but no one in the audience can seriously doubt that after “Make Believe” her love for Ravenal is the real thing.

13. Six Plays by Rodgers and Hammerstein (New York: Modern Library Association, 1959), 161–62.

14. Ibid., 176.

15. Ibid., 100.

16. Although the published vocal score (Williamson Music Co.) lists the scene between Julie and Billy as act I, scene 1 (following the pantomimed Prelude), the published libretto identifies the scene as act I, scene 2. See Six Plays.

17. Ibid., 93–94.

18. Quotation in Rodgers, Musical Stages, 236. State Fair was released in August 1945, several months after the April opening of Carousel.

19. Ibid.

20. The words “dozens of boys,” “many a likely,” “does what he can,” “she has a few,” and “fellers of two” also display these untied and metrically neutral eighth-note triplets. During the opening thoughts in the “Soliloquy” (when Billy imagines that he will be having a son), he sings metrically challenging quarter-note triplets tied to quarter notes (e.g., “The old man!” and “Of his Dad”). See the introduction of the quarter-note triplet in chapter 3, 54–55.

The eighth-note triplets that Billy and Julie sing do not go against the metrical grain as Reno Sweeney’s half-note triplets do in “I Get a Kick Out of You” (the bracketed words and syllables in “Mere al-co-[hol doesn’t thrill me at] all, / so [tell me why should it be] true” and Example 3.1a). Nevertheless, they do help to establish a distinct and slightly askew rhythmic plane (especially when preceded by ties in “If I Loved You”), just as Billy and Julie try unsuccessfully to thwart society’s expectations. Four measures of triplets appear in succession in Billy’s “Soliloquy” (in duple meter) on the words that describe the future Billy Jr. and Billy himself: “No pot-bellied, baggy-eyed bully’ll boss him a round” (in Example 9.4a), later with the words, “No fat bottomed, flabby-faced, pot-bellied, baggy-eyed bastard’ll boss him around.”

21. David Ewen writes that the Carousel waltzes were taken from a work called Waltz Suite that Paul Whiteman had commissioned but never performed (Ewen, Richard Rodgers, 239). Rodgers, who in his autobiography recalls two other associations with Whiteman in 1935 and 1936, is silent on this point.

22. “Two Little People” does not appear as a separate title in the vocal score (Williamson Music Co., 43–47), but Hammerstein does so title this music in his Lyrics, 142. Also in Lyrics Hammerstein includes a stanza that does not appear in the published vocal score: “There’s a feathery little cloud floatin’ by / Like a lonely leaf on a big blue stream. / And two people—you and I—/ Who cares what we dream?” Hammerstein’s stanza does appear, however, in the holograph manuscript in the Music Division of the Library of Congress where it is sung by Julie to music that is altered only on the words, “leaf on a big blue stream” (g-f-e-d-c-d). In his holograph score Rodgers entered a sketch labeled “2 little people” that does not correspond either to Hammerstein’s text or to Rodgers’s final version.

23. Aside from Julie’s complementary stanza discussed in the previous note, the only major changes between Rodgers’s holograph and the published vocal score are those of key and the absence of