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

together. Since one prefers to sit and the other to stand, even the concepts behind their songs reveal their complementariness. As a show-stopper in the literal sense, “Big D” ranks as perhaps the sole (and welcome) exception to the work’s stature as an integrated musical.

The principal characteristics that unify The Most Happy Fella musically do not always serve dramatic ends. The first of Loesser’s most frequent melodic ideas, the melodic sequence defined earlier (Example 11.4) provides musical unity without dramatic meaning.47 With only a few small exceptions, however, Loesser consistently employs another melodic unifier. This second melodic idea serves as the basis of a melodic family of related motives, melodies in which a descending minor or major second (a half-step or a whole-step) is followed by a wider descending leap that makes forceful dramatic points. A small but representative sample of this ubiquitous melodic stamp is shown in Example 11.6. Loesser’s keen dramatic instincts can be witnessed as the growing intensification of this large family of motives expands throughout the evening from “Benvenuta” (Example 11.6a) to “How Beautiful the Days” (Example 11.6b) and “Warm All Over” (Example 11.6c) to Rosabella’s heartfelt arioso, “I Love Him,” when a minuscule minor second twice erupts into a full and uninhibited octave (Example 11.6d).

Loesser introduces a less familial and more individually significant musical motive after Tony has asked Joe for his picture (see the “Tony” motive in Example 11.7a). Convinced by his sister Marie that he “ain’t young no more,” “ain’t good lookin,’” and “ain’t smart,” the not-so-happy fella has the first of several chats with his deceased Mamma (act I, scene 2): “An’ sometime soon I wanna send-a for Rosabella to come down here to Napa an’ get marry. I gotta send-a Joe’s pitch.’”48 The music that underscores Tony’s dialogue with his mother consists of a repeated “sighing” figure composed of descending seconds on strong beats (appoggiaturas), a familiar figure derived from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century operatic depictions of pain and loneliness, underneath a sustained string tremolo that contributes still further to the drama of the moment.49

Example 11.6. The family of motives in The Most Happy Fella (M = major; m = minor; d = diminished; A = augmented; P = perfect)

(a) “Benvenuta”

(b) “How Beautiful the Days”

(c) “Warm All Over”

(d) “I Love Him”

In act II, Marie again feeds her brother’s low self-image despite Rosabella’s assurance that Tony makes her feel “Warm All Over” (in contrast to the “Cold and Dead” response she felt after sleeping with Joe). Consequently, the still-unhappy central character “searches the sky for ‘Mamma’ and finds her up there,” and the original form of his “sighing” returns to underscore a brief monologue. Tony then sings a sad reprise of his sister’s didactic warning, “Young People,” with still more self-flagellating lyrics: “Young people gotta dance, dance, dance, / Old people gotta sit dere an’ watch, watch, watch. / Wit’ da make believe smile in da eye. / Young people gotta live, live, live. / Old people gotta sit dere an’ die.”50

After the potent dramatic moment in the final scene of act II, Rosabella finally convinces Tony that she loves him, not out of pity for an aging invalid but “like a woman needs a man.” To celebrate this long-awaited moment Tony and Rosabella sing their rapturous duet, “My Heart Is So Full of You.” Tony announces that the delayed wedding party will take place that night, and everyone spontaneously dances a hoedown.

The newfound joy of this May-September mailorder romance is shortlived. Rosabella faints from the strain, discovers that she is pregnant with Joe’s baby, and asks Cleo for advice. Tony, with a new self-confidence and overcome by love (he is also somewhat oblivious to Rosabella’s internal anguish), again communicates with his mother over the returning string tremolo and the “sighing” “Tony” motive (Example 11.7a). This time, however, when Tony sings to his mother, Loesser ingeniously converts the “sighing” motive into a passionate arioso of hope and optimism, “Mamma, Mamma” (Example 11.7b). Tony’s sighing motive will return briefly in the final scene of the show on the words “have da baby,” as Tony, “reflecting sadly,” decides to accept Rosabella’s moment of infidelity as well as its consequences. And as he did in “Mamma, Mamma” at the end of act II, Tony successfully converts a motive that had previously reflected sadness, loneliness, and self-pity into positive emotions throughout the ten passionate measures of the abbreviated aria in act III, “She gonna come home wit’ me.”51

Example 11.7. “Tony” motive

(a) original

(b) transformed

Just as Rosabella comes to express her growing love for Tony with ever-expanding intervals, Tony learns to channel the self-pity expressed in his sighing motive. By the end of the musical the “Tony” motive has been transformed into a love that allows him to put the well-being of another person ahead of himself and to understand how Rosabella’s mistake with Joe was the consequence of Tony’s own error when he sent Rosabella Joe’s picture rather than his own. As part of this metamorphosis Tony finally stands up to his sister. When Marie once again points out his age, physical unattractiveness, and lack of intelligence, the formerly vulnerable Tony responds to the final insult in this litany in underscored speech: “No! In da head omma no smart, ma, in da heart, Marie. In da heart!”52

Loesser’s The Most Happy Fella, smart in the head as well as in the heart, has managed to entertain and move audiences as much as nearly any musical that aspires to operatic realms (Loesser’s denials notwithstanding). Although it lacks the dazzling and witty dialogue, lyrics, and songs of its more popular—and stylistically more homogeneous—Broadway predecessor Guys and Dolls, Loesser’s musical story of Tony and his Rosabella offers what Burrows described as “a gentle something that wanted to ‘make them cry.’”53The Most Happy Fella makes us cry.

Four years later Loesser himself was crying over the failure (ninety-seven performances) of the bucolic Greenwillow (1960). The show contained an excellent score, the best efforts of Tony Perkins in the