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

optimism of “then you’ll be mine, all mine” that concludes the song. In Petruchio’s “Where Is the Life That Late I Led?” Porter contrasts the life of the carefree bachelor in the main chorus (major mode) with a mixture of minor and major modes that conveys his bittersweet nostalgia for the women he must now relinquish as a married man. Thus, in the slower second portion of the song Momo and Rebecca stir memories in the minor mode and Alice and Lucretia in the major, while memories of Carolina and Fedora contain elements of the two.

Example 10.3. “We Open in Venice”

(a) minor mode

(b) major mode

Porter lessens the dramatic contrast between Padua and Baltimore, however, when he contrasts major and minor modes in the latter songs as well. In fact, it might be said that this device—widely and effectively used by Schubert—not only serves as Porter’s way of demonstrating parallels between the Shrew numbers and the Baltimore numbers. In the end, it functions primarily as a unifying musical device that shapes a musically integrated score. The Paduan “We Open in Venice,” for example, was certainly intended to parallel “Another Op’nin,’ Another Show” in Baltimore. In the Padua excerpts (Example 10.3) the players sing in the minor mode when describing themselves and in the major mode when they relate their circular itinerary. Conversely, “Another Op’nin’” opens in the major mode (E major) and moves to G minor in the release (the B section) to convey the anxiety of the four weeks that lead to this opening (“Four weeks you rehearse and rehearse / Three weeks and it couldn’t be worse”). Even a song as far removed from the drama as “Too Darn Hot” demonstrates a prominent move from minor (the “too darn hot” portion) to major (the “Kinsey report” portion).

Although the degree to which Kiss Me, Kate employs the major-minor juxtapositions is perhaps unprecedented in a Porter show, the roots of this idea can be found in Porter’s pre–Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Anything Goes (and many other songs; see, for example its continuous presence in “Night and Day”). We have already observed that the verse of the title song in his earlier musical (Example 3.2, p. 56) clearly contrasts the past (minor mode) with the present (major mode). In another example, the sea chantey “There’ll Always Be a Lady Fair” juxtaposes the modes to distinguish the hardships of a sailor’s life in the verse (minor mode) from the fair ladies waiting on land (major mode). The intimidation by Rodgers and Hammerstein may have inspired Porter to explore additional and increasingly subtle ways to capture nuances in his characters and in their texts, but he did not suddenly discover textual realism or the dramatic potential of music after attending a production of Oklahoma!

Porter’s efforts to demonstrate even more thematic unity for the purposes of dramatic credibility, however, do distinguish Kiss Me, Kate from his pre–Rodgers and Hammerstein shows, including Anything Goes. It also arguably surpasses Oklahoma!, if not Carousel, in this respect. Some musical material such as the reappearance of the repeated fourth that marks the opening of the main tune of “Another Op’nin’” as the vamp in the following “Why Can’t You Behave?” (Example 10.4a, mm. 5–6), helps to create a smooth musical linkage between the first two numbers without conveying a comparable dramatic meaning.13 But most connections do serve dramatic purposes. Bill and Lois, for example, share improper behavior. Bill is a shiftless yet likably dishonest gambler who signs an I.O.U. with Fred Graham’s name; Lois is a shameless and fickle (and equally endearing) flirt who, in the role of Bianca, will mate with any Tom, Dick, or Harry and, as herself, date any man who asks her out for “something wet.” It therefore makes sense that the verse of “Why Can’t You Behave?” returns in “Always True To You in My Fashion.” The transformation of “Why Can’t You Behave?” (Example 10.4a) from the first act, when it is sung by Lois to Bill, into an orchestral pavane in act II (Example 10.4b) reinforces the commonality between Lois and Bill. At the same time it further identifies Lois and Bianca as the same character and clarifies the usurpation of the “Behave” theme in “Fashion.”14

Example 10.4. “Why Can’t You Behave?” transformed in the Pavane

(a) “Why Can’t You Behave?”

(b) Pavane

Another musical figure that links several songs first occurs in “I Sing of Love.”15 Not only does this song display a 6/8 meter that evokes popular Italian tarantellas such as “Funiculi, Funiculà,” it also presents a melodic and harmonic shift from C major to F minor (on the words “We sing of [C major] love” [F minor]) that will resurface in two songs from act II (a progression anticipated in “What Is This Thing Called Love?” from 1920). With only insignificant alterations this exotic, pseudo-Renaissance juxtaposition of major and minor harmonic shifts returns in the verse of “Where Is the Life That Late I Led?” (also in 6/8 meter). Here Petruchio describes the awakening of his desire and occasionally love for the opposite sex many years before (“Since I reached the charming age of [C major] puberty” [F minor]). In “Bianca” the progression appears in reverse, F minor to C major, when Bill as Poet expresses his love for Bianca in the verse of the song that bears her name (“While rehearsing with Bianca, / She’s the darling I a- [F minor] dore” [C major]). In each case, love underlies the harmony and links the musical material.

Kiss Me, Kate, act I, finale. Patricia Morison and Alfred Drake in the center (1948). Photograph: Eileen Darby. Museum of the City of New York. Theater Collection.

Also dramatically motivated are the thematic recurrences between the finales of act I and act II. At the end of act I Petruchio, accompanied by “all singing principals (except Hattie) and chorus,” serenades his shrewish new bride, who shrieks “No! Go! Nay! Away!” before breaking character and shouting “Fred!” The verbal