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

were to take into account the return engagement that directly followed West Side Story’s tour, however, its place in the 1920–1959 list would rise to fourteenth and the 985 performance total would move West Side Story up to eighth place on the Broadway scoreboard for the decade, less than 100 performances below Pajama Game and Damn Yankees in sixth and seventh position, respectively. The point is that despite the difficulty of raising the needed $350,000, despite the cast of virtual unknowns, despite the fact that about a hundred people walked out night after night in response to its grim subject matter, West Side Story was a hit.

3. John McClain, “Music Magnificent in Overwhelming Hit,” New York Journal-American, September 27, 1957; quoted in Steven Suskin, Opening Night on Broadway, 696; reprinted in New York Theatre Critics’ Reviews, vol. 18, 254.

4. Walter Kerr, “‘West Side Story,’” New York Herald Tribune, September 27, 1957; quoted in Suskin, Opening Night on Broadway, 695–96 (quotations on 696); reprinted in New York Theatre Critics’ Reviews, vol. 18, 253.

5. Brooks Atkinson, “Theatre: The Jungles of the City,” New York Times, September 27, 1957, 14; quoted in Suskin, Opening Night on Broadway, 695; reprinted in New York Theatre Critics’ Reviews, vol. 18, 253.

6. Robert Coleman, “‘West Side Story’ A Sensational Hit!,” Daily Mirror, September 27, 1957. New York Theatre Critics’ Reviews, vol. 18, 254. John McClain, “Music Magnificent in Overwhelming Hit,” and John Chapman, “‘West Side Story’: A Splendid and Super-modern Musical Drama,” Daily News, September 27, 1957; reprinted in New York Theatre Critics’ Reviews, vol. 18, 252; the McClain and Chapman reviews are excerpted in Suskin, Opening Night on Broadway, 695–96.

7. Quotation in Stephen Banfield, Sondheim’s Broadway Musicals, 39. Not until 1988 would a movie (The Last Emperor) capture as many Academy Awards (see chapter 14 for specific details).

8. Bernstein’s log was reprinted in Findings, 144–47, and in 1985 with the jacket notes to Bernstein’s recording, Deutsche Grammophon 4125253–1/4. References to this log will be keyed to the pagination in Findings.

9. Otis L. Guernsey Jr., ed., Broadway Song & Story, 40–54.

10. Craig Zadan, Sondheim & Co., 11–31.

11. Humphrey Burton, Leonard Bernstein, 265–77; Sondheim, “An Anecdote,” xi–xii; and Mel Gussow, “‘West Side Story’: The Beginning of Something Great.” Stephen Banfield discusses the genesis of West Side Story in Sondheim’s Broadway Musicals, 31–38.

12. The manuscript evidence suggests that the discrepancies among the recollections are greatly exaggerated in Joan Peyser’s relentlessly negative Bernstein biography, in which she accuses the collaborators of deliberate lying. See Peyser, Leonard Bernstein, 255–77.

13. The eight libretto drafts are dated as follows: (1) January 1956; (2) Spring 1956; (3) March 15, 1956; (4) Winter 1956; (5) April 14, 1957; (6) May 1, 1957; (7) June 1, 1957; and (8) July 19, 1957. I am grateful to Harold L. Miller and the State Historical Society of Wisconsin for making these and other West Side Story materials available to me.

14. All 1949 entries appear in Bernstein, Findings, 147.

15. All 1955 entries appear in Bernstein, Findings, 147–48.

16. Guernsey, ed., Broadway Song & Story, 41.

17. Candide would open the first of its disappointing seventy-three performances on December 1, 1956.

18. Bernstein, Findings, 148.

19. Bernstein’s 1957 entries are located in Bernstein, Findings, 146–47.

20. “Mambo” was reprised on the drugstore juke box late in act II when the Jets are taunting Anita (Taunting Scene). Gussow, “‘West Side Story’: The Beginning of Something Great.”

21. Ibid.

22. Peyser, Leonard Bernstein, 267 and note 20.

23. Gussow, “‘West Side Story’: The Beginning of Something Great.”

24. Ibid. The undeniable organicism of the work and Bernstein’s awareness of musical technique makes one skeptical of the composer’s remark that he “didn’t do all this on purpose.”

25. Peyser, Leonard Bernstein, 267.

26. Another possible melodic source for the opening of “Somewhere” is a prominent lyrical theme in Richard Strauss’s youthful Burleske for piano and orchestra (1885–1886). See chapter 12, note 46.

27. Peyser, Leonard Bernstein, 261. Despite its borrowed origins, Bernstein remembered that it “took longer to write that song [“Maria”] than any other” because “it’s difficult to make a strong love song and avoid corn.” See Zadan, Sondheim & Co., 21.

The principal certain or possible borrowings are derived from Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet (and perhaps Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto), Blitzstein’s Regina (previously discussed and illustrated with Bernstein’s transformations in Examples 13.1 and 13.2), the Shofar call or Berg’s Piano Sonata, op. 1 (the latter shown in Example 13.9), and Wagner’s “redemption” motive from Die Walküre (Example 13.8). Other possibilities include the following: “America” (Ravel’s “Chansons romanesque” from Don Quichotte [1933] and Copland’s El Salón México [1936], the latter a work which Bernstein had arranged for solo piano in 1941); “Tonight” (Quintet) (Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, third movement [1930]); and “I Feel Pretty” (Ravel’s Rhapsodie Espagnole [1908]). The Stravinsky reference appears in Stempel, “Broadway’s Mozartean Moment,” 48. For another possible Beethoven borrowing, see note 73.

Gradenwitz overstates the musical resemblance between the opening measure of the Balcony Scene and the first four notes of Britten’s “Goodnight Theme” from act I of The Rape of Lucretia, the recently published score of which Bernstein noticed in Gradenwitz’s “modest private apartment.” Peyser fixes a date (1946) to this occasion and adds that Bernstein was then attending rehearsals of the work prior to its premiere. Her statement that “‘Tonight’ was derived from Benjamin Britten” similarly places far too great a burden on this four-note descending scale. See Peter Gradenwitz, Leonard Bernstein, 193 and Peyser, Leonard Bernstein, 365–66.

28. The libretto drafts of January and Spring 1956 describe the bridal shop song as “light and gay,” a description that fits “Oh, Happy We” but not “One Hand, One Heart,” which until the Washington tryouts in August 1957 “had only a dotted half note to each bar.” Zadan, Sondheim & Co., 23 (see also note 35).

29. According to Burton, “Where Does It Get You in the End?” was “annexed from the Venice scene in Candide.” Humphrey Burton, Leonard Bernstein, 269.

30. Other material would be altered or discarded in 1957. Instead of a Dream Ballet, the librettos before April 14 indicated a scene in