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

Although Kerman’s overall assessment of Tosca’s artistic worth has not gone unchallenged, even sympathetic Puccini scholars such as Roger Parker and Mosco Carner understand Kerman’s “exasperation.” Like Kerman, Parker concludes that “the theme is that of Cavaradossi’s soliloquy earlier in the third act; Tosca has had no opportunity to hear it; what we see and what we hear seem out of joint.” Roger Parker, “Analysis: act I in perspective,” in Mosco Carner, Giacomo Puccini: “Tosca” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 138.

30. The terms “theatrical truth” and “literal truth” are used by Sondheim in his assessment in 1985 of the most effective placement of “Gee, Officer Krupke” in West Side Story. Otis, L. Guernsey Jr., ed., Broadway Song & Story, 50.

31. In adopting Shakespeare, Porter first uses the eight lines that begin with “I am ashamed that women are so simple” and ends with “should well agree with our external parts.” He then replaces Shakespeare’s “Then vail your stomachs, for it is no boot, / And place your hands below your husband’s foot” with “So wife, hold your temper and meekly put / Your hand ‘neath the sole of your husband’s foot.” Porter’s final two lines agree with Shakespeare’s external rhymes (although the composer adds a second “ready” in the last line).

32. Bernard Shaw, Dramatic Opinions and Essays with an Apology (New York: Brentano’s, 1928), vol. 2, 364.

33. Robert B. Heilman, “The Taming Untamed, or the Return of the Shrew,” Modern Language Quarterly 27 (June 1966): 159.

34. “The Remaking of the Canon,” Partisan Review 58 (1991): 380.

35. Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971), 206. More recently, Harold Bloom offers a thoughtful and spirited defense of Kiss Me, Kate on social grounds, for example: “One would have to be tone deaf (or ideologically crazed) not to hear in this [Act V, scene 1, lines 130–38] a subtly exquisite music of marriage at its happiest” (Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, 28–35; quotation on 33).

36. Martha Andresen-Thom, “Shrew-taming and Other Rituals of Aggression: Baiting and Bonding on the Stage and in the Wild,” in Women’s Studies 9 (1982): 121–43; quotation on 141.

37. I am indebted to my colleague Peter Greenfield, professor of English at the University of Puget Sound, for pointing out the “play” interpretation.

38. See, for example, Catherine Clément’s feminist indictment of the operatic tradition, Opera, or the Undoing of Women (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988), and Susan McClary, Feminine Endings (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991).

Chapter 11: Guys and Dolls and The Most Happy Fella

1. This last Broadway revival of The Most Happy Fella was again upstaged in the Best Revival category by the splashier and fully orchestrated revival of Guys and Dolls (the Fella revival offered only two pianos).

2. See Geoffrey Block, “Frank Loesser’s Sketchbooks”; Larry Stempel, “The Musical Play Expands”; and Thomas L. Riis, Frank Loesser, 117–66.

3. For profiles of Loesser’s early career see Arthur Loesser, “My Brother Frank,” Notes 7 (March 1950): 217–39, David Ewen, “He Passes the Ammunition for Hits,” and Thomas L. Riis, Frank Loesser, 1–49.

4. Styne’s High Button Shoes (1947) and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1949) and Lane’s Finian’s Rainbow (1947) were the earliest successes of these prominent Broadway composers.

5. Steven Suskin, Opening Night on Broadway, 275.

6. In his notes to the 1958 original London cast recording of Where’s Charley?, Stanley Green noted that “at the time of its closing, its 792 performances made it the tenth longest-running musical in Broadway history” (Monmouth-Evergreen MES/7029). See also Riis, 50–73.

7. Suskin, Opening Night on Broadway, 275.

8. John McClain, “The Best Thing since ‘Pal Joey,’” New York Journal-American, November 25, 1950; quoted in Suskin, Opening Night on Broadway, 274; reprinted New York Theatre Critics’ Reviews, vol. 11, 186.

9. Abe Burrows, “The Making of Guys & Dolls.” For additional material on the genesis of Guys and Dolls see Arthur Martin Mann, “The Musicals of Frank Loesser,” 67–87, and Riis, 74–82.

10. Burrows, “The Making of Guys & Dolls,” 41.

11. On June 29, 1994, this production became the longest running revival in Broadway history up to that time.

12. William Kennedy, “The Runyonland Express Is Back in Town,” New York Times, April 12, 1992, sec. 2, 1 and 26, and Jo Swerling Jr., “Abe Burrows: Undue Credit?,” New York Times, May 3, 1992, sec. 2, 4 (with a response from William Kennedy). Those familiar with the machinations of Hollywood screenplays will recognize the terms of Swerling’s contract that allowed him to receive primary credit as the libretto’s author, even if none of his work was used. It is difficult to credit the notion espoused by Swerling’s son that Feuer, Martin, and stage manager Henri Caubisens conspired with Burrows to diminish Swerling’s role in the Guys and Dolls drama. Burrows’s account is also corroborated in Susan Loesser, A Most Remarkable Fella, 101–02.

13. Burrows, “The Making of Guys & Dolls,” 44.

14. Ibid, 47.

15. The quasi-triplets created by two groups of three eighth notes (in 6/8 time) also pervade Adelaide’s admonishment of Nathan in “Sue Me.”

16. Late in the show when Sarah sings her duet with Adelaide, “Marry the Man Today,” her evolution is complete and triplets (albeit of the common eighth-note variety) become the dominant rhythm.

17. Tonic (4 measures), dominant (2 measures), tonic (6 measures), dominant (2 measures), and tonic (1 measure).

18. A leading Italian bass at La Scala (1921–24) and the Metropolitan Opera (1926–1948), Pinza was introduced in chapter 9 as the first internationally known opera singer to star on Broadway (South Pacific [1949]).

19. Another song intended to feature Nathan and Sky, “Travelin’ Light,” was one of several songs dropped from the show. It is included in An Evening with Frank Loesser: Frank Loesser Performs Songs from His Hit Shows (DRG 5169).

20. Frank Loesser, “Some Notes on a Musical.”

21. Ironically, one of these new songs, “Adelaide,” was given to Nathan, played by Frank Sinatra.

22. Block, “Frank Loesser’s Sketchbooks.”

23. Loesser Collection, Music Division, New York Public Library, 3129–30.

24. Ibid., 2842. This undated sketch page is found sandwiched between other pages