Scores for Musical Shows

[papeetepatrick]

Last year's 'The Pirate Queen' was hopefully part of this new trend. Sounded dreadful beyond belief (by Claude-Michel Schonburg and Alain Boublil of 'Les Miserables' and 'Miss Saigon'), and giant flops are necessary if fashions are to change. I wouldn't even listen to the score of this for purposes of informing myself, given that I don't like their famous scores very much either. Obviously the best music heard on Broadway in the last 5 years was 'La Boheme', although I'd rather still see a more traditional treatment. But I like that they were able to be pretty successful with real opera music on Broadway, and their rotating casts did prove (to someone like me who wasn't paying attention at the time) that they were making sure that it was really sung.

[papeetepatrick]

We were recently talking about Pennebaker's recording of the original cast album of 'Company'. I haven't been concentrating on shows lately, but finally caught up with the mid-80s DVD of the recording sessions of 'West Side Story', with Bernstein conducting it. This I had never heard on CD somehow (and I hadn't even known the most important thing, that Lenny conducted it), and I can see that this is the way to hear it. It's mostly about Bernstein, but also about Bernstein and TeKanawa. I'm not quite through with it, but the high point is surely 'I Feel Pretty', done in a softer tempo, and Kiri sings it divinely, and you see Lenny singing it silently with her, there he is the owner of the thing. Whatever other flaws in this, they don't really matter: You are seeing 'West Side Story' updated here because he'd never conducted it before. And I had forgotten how unique and thrilling a conductor he always was. How much more I truly love it than Boulez's clipped and sometimes dismissive-of-the-music style, as if attempting to close off rather than open up.

And the huge flaw is, I cannot agree with Bernstein on this, IS Carreras. He talks about this show about Spanish-speaking people and yet how he is the only native speaker of Spanish in this opera-star cast, and how making a transition into 'New Yorkese' is hard for him. Yes--he doesn't succeed in this for a single moment. I'm sure people talked about this at the time. He does not have an ear for accents, and all his 'West Side Story' songs would sound fine on a 'Hits of Broadway Album', but not in a recording of the whole score where he is supposed to be Tony, Jet gang member. You can tell he doesn't have this ear because both TeKanawa and Tatania Troyannos (as Anita) do have it; although I don't see Troyannos as an ideal Anita. Kiri follows Lenny's instructions on not being 'too Puerto Rican with the r's' and then she gets it exactly right. There is elocution correction from the engineers on Carrera's 'Somethin's Coming', one of the glories of the score, and Bernstein gets furious, but he is also very impatient with Carreras throughout, while continually restating that using him is this fresh thing to do. I also know Kiri's excellent ability with accents from 'South Pacific', where she does 'Honey Bun', the least beautiful song in the whole show, with a wonderfully precise flat-American-Midwestern accent. I also do not care for his work with Kiri on their South Pacific recording, but it's more the voice that time than the accent being off.

Since 'Somewhere' is sung by an offstage voice, Kiri as Maria does not do it on the actual, but Lenny had to hear how she would sound doing it--of course he'd want to. The whole thing is worth it to see the collaboration of these two musical geniuses. Of course, I can't see how anyone wouldn't love Kiri's voice more than anybody else's because I do, and I greatly value the 3 times I heard her in Strauss, Verdi, and Barber live. The same thing happened when Paul McCartney was talking about her voice when she was in his 'Liverpool Oratario'. And Paul Theroux in 'the Happy Isles of Oceania' wrote of listening to cassettes of Kiri's arias deep in the remote and lonely Marquesas Islands.

You see what I'd heard about Bernstein's smoking, it's constant; I remember how horrible it seemed when he died. But there's his spaciousness, and you can see much more about 'West Side Story' in some ways because of his presence in it than ever could be possible in a production, and certainly more about the music itself than you get in the movie, although that is quite well-done there orchestra-wise; but Marni Nixon's singing is not in the same league as Kiri's. I had even heard criticism of her on that CD, but I don't know what it could be about. In any case, for the recording, it is Marilyn Horne who does the final 'Somewhere'.

[carbro]

Thanks for your comments, papeete. I remember the original telecast -- most vividly Lenny's exasperation with poor Carreras. Both the audio and video are valuable pieces of Bernsteiniana.

I didn't know him, but the world seems a little duller without him, doesn't it?

[papeetepatrick]

I didn't know him, but the world seems a little duller without him, doesn't it?

You say perfectly the way I feel it, and the way he seemed to define New York in such a special and beautiful way in particular is gone. Now that you mention it, I think that many of the changes that have happened here that bother me almost constitute a post-Leonard Bernstein Manhattan. And it was more than just 'West Side Story'. I don't know the old film 'A King in New York' or what it's about (Chaplin, isn't it?), but that title out of context somehow suits what he was.

[dirac]

Whatever other flaws in this, they don't really matter: You are seeing 'West Side Story' updated here because he'd never conducted it before.

Thank you for the long review, papeetepatrick. The recording certainly has value for that and other reasons, but it wasn't to my taste. The score is too far from opera for the singers to sound right, for me anyway.

[bart]

Talk of the te Kanawa / Carreras West Side Story made me remember an excesllent South Bank Show documentary about the making of the album. It was replayed on Bravo here in the U.S. in the late 80s.

I remember how comfortable te Kanawa appeared to be at the recording sessions. Despite some minor elocution difficulties, she was a wonderful Maria. Checking Google, I found the following reference to the documentary on imdb.com:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0308495/

I wish I could remember the Anita -- Tatiana Troyanos!!!

[papeetepatrick]

Bart--aren't we talking about the same documentary?

Definitely agree TeKanawa was wonderfully relaxed and simply in awe of Bernstein, comparing him even to Mozart which he later contradicts without referencing her remark specifically, but when talking about how 'America' was his favourite song from the show. He was talking about how it remained the freshest--he said 'well, maybe not quite like Mozart; none of us is on that level' (I disagree; many great artists are occasionally up there, just not nearly as often as Mozart...) And those big dancing musical interludes between the verses are wonderfully soaring--in quite the same away as the 'around the corner or whistlin' down the river' are in 'Somethin's Comin', which is probably my favourite song from the show, but was not well-sung by Carreras; this is, in fact, where the engineer annoyed Bernstein with prodding about the accent, with Carreras singing 'comb-ing' instead of the American sound that was needed, and there was even a bit of 'wheez-lin' down the reeee-ver'. I think Bernstein realized that that particular problem was hopeless, was not going to be solved, and well, they weren't going to fire him, so let's just give it up.

[carbro]

If I start watching, I may never emerge, but someone has posted a series of clips titled "Leonard Bernstein: West Side Story, studio-takes" on YouTube. (YouTube, like the internet itself, is harder to get out of than quicksand.)

From the not-really-familiar bit I've seen of them so far, I cannot confidently verify that this was the same documentary shown on PBS, but my guess is that it is.

Don't let the Danish subtitles distract you, because reading the translation is pretty interesting, too, for someone who knows no Danish.

If you get stuck in there, give a shout. I'll toss you a line.

[papeetepatrick]

carbro! that's MARVELOUS! thanks soooo much! Yes, of course, those are all the ones, and just please watch if you have time the 'I Feel Pretty' and Lenny talking about how 'Kiri just ate it up' with the more Viennese tempo he took for it.

[papeetepatrick]

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/...very-pretty/?hp

http://breakingnews.nypost.com/dynamic/sto...mp;SECTION=HOME

Two stories on Tin Pan Alley's current predicament. I also found an old NYTimes story from a few years ago about the dancer June Ekman, who has one of those wonderful exotic apartments in one of the buildings, and who teaches the Alexander Technique. Anybody know the name JUNE EKMAN as a professional dancer?

[dirac]

Thanks for posting, papeetepatrick. My first instinct is to say of course the houses should be preserved, but there may be more to the story.

It's not only changing musical tastes that spelled the end for Tin Pan Alley, I suppose, but the development of performers writing their own material instead of looking to outside songwriters.

[papeetepatrick]

Pas Sur La Bouche

A must-see for anyone interesting in musical comedy and operetta on film. This is the only way you can easily see it, and it is glorious, the best musical film IMO since 'Hair', easily. A musical which is blessed with Alain Resnais's genius is rare and rarefied indeed. Superb young musical actor Jalil Lespert, who has that big kind of face that Maurice Chevalier used to have. This is a sumptuous feast of a movie, and is based on an old 20s or 30s operetta. There is one ghastly song, but everything else is sterling,.

[papeetepatrick]

I don't think I've mentioned the score for 'On a Clear Day You Can See Forever', but sidwich, dirac and I (and perhaps others) did discuss it and briefly the Broadway version and the film version--I think on a Fred Astaire thread, talk about dubbing, etc.. I'm bringing it up again because I watched the film again over the weekend, and was hoping to be pleasantly surprised, especially since I've been resuscitated recently into a HUGE BABS FAN again, due to seeing and hearing some of the concerts on DVD and CD and even just a YouTube of 'Something Wonderful' from one of the concerts; i'm convinced now that her uniqueness as a singer is that she is really an opera singer who sings pop--not that she's greater than a few other singers, but it's bigger the way an opera singer's voice is. I thought maybe I'd just been some know-it-all little student attitude' some 38 years ago when I was startled at how awful I thought the film was. Well, this time I thought it was even worse. I don't think it has a thing going for it, and that the most extraordinary thing about it is that Ms. Streisand sings ALL of her songs dreadfully, with no respect for the material, yes, she sings them like she's in a club, just over-styling all over the place. Montand singing is also worthless here, he has no energy even atop the PanAm Building with 'Come Back to Me' (what a corny montage of Manhattan that is as well), and they didn't even make him pronouce the words properly, so the French accent comes out 'You ah a dweam, Me-winda, just a mi-wage, so they say...'

I remember as a high school freshman reading the mostly unfavourable reviews when Barbara Harris and John Cullum opened the Lerner/Lane show about 1965. But then I heard the album, and think it is one of the best scores ever written for a Broadway shoe. Left out of the movie are 'S.S. Bernard Cohn', 'Wait Till We're 65','Don't Tamper with my Sister', 'When I'm Being Born Again' (well, that last was little sacrifice), and 'Tosy and Cosh' is only background music for the beginning of Melinda's overdressed and really rather coarse flirtation with Tentrees (I think it's Moncrief in the original, but that's one difference that really doesn't matter), with this absurd glass of wine on the cleavage, such that you don't think of aristocracy so much as the Eating Scene from 'Tom Jones'. This is accompanied by a new song 'Love With all the Trimmings', which is pretty repellent too, almost like an outgrowth of the new song Jerry Herman wrote for her in 'Hello, Dolly!' while she brushes her hair, 'Love Is Only Love', which is IMO a much better song, although Lane by far the more gifted songwriter (I assume he wrote both this and 'Go To Sleep', which I also can't stand.)

Worse than any of this is the way Streisand sings the songs, like the opening 'Hurry, It's Lovely Up Here', sung enchantingly by Barbara Harris--Streisand sings this like some oozing lounge singer. And the fact that she is given TWO of the men's songs that aren't slashed--the title song, although also sung weakly by Montand, she belts out at the end, very reminiscent of the end of 'Sweet Charity', which has a lot of problems, but nowhere near this much of a mess.

Most unforgivable is Clifford David's gorgeous rendition of 'She Wasn't You' is now sung by Barbra as 'He Wasn't You' to Montand on the shrink's couch. And she sings it in that pretentious weird sinuous quasi-floating way she was using a good bit at the time, which worked for 'Love Is Only Love', but not in any of these songs.

'Funny Girl' and 'Hello, Dolly!' both were good, if not great, films, and the material is respected even if it's not blue ribbon. I just wonder what happened in this disaster. We have Vincent Minnelli, of incredible film musical credentials ('Gigi', 'The Band Wagon', and others). And even though Streisand was always so potent at the time she was often over-the-top in Funny Girl and Hello, Dolly, she did stay reasonably within the songs of a SHOW, instead of tearing them apart and making them into 'Streisand material'. There seems to be no control over much of anything in this grotesque travesty--and the early scenes in Montand's office are ENDLESS. And 'What Did I have that I Don't Have', which is the only one that would lend itself to Streisand's exaggerations, also has no focus to it, although she does push it even here.

Sidwich and dirac, do you have any idea why this happened? Did this crew just let Babs do whatever she wanted to, or did they just decide we'll go the commercial vehicle, never was that great a show anyway? Am I just being beastly, and you think it's a good or decent movie? Because Hello, Dolly did end up as a very good film, and Babs works in it beautifully, even if people wanted something else, not someone so young.

Anyway, this post is partially about what I find a terrible movie, maybe Barbra's worst (although I've never gotten more than halfway through 'funny Lady' or 'A Star is Born'), but also about a wholesale trashing of a beautiful Broadway score. All the grandeur of the English part is gone, in favour of this vaguely lewd sort of costumey tableau--and acting-wise, although Barbra does some good comedy work as Daisy Gamble, she is never convincing as Melinda. I just wonder if anyone felt similarly about this, to me it's like 'how did they get away with this?' However much a bomb 'A Little Night Music' is considered to be, it still has a few good moments with Len Cariou, and I don't think comes close to what happened with this product, which is really a bit shocking.

The one good thing to come out of it is that she really began to sing the title song well in TV (Barbra Streisand and Other Musical Instruments), and in concerts as recently as the 90s and perhaps beyond.

[dirac]

It's not a particularly good movie but the original show had its own problems – Lerner never stopped tinkering with it – so it's not exactly vandalizing a masterpiece. The original film of On a Clear Day was supposed to be a three hour movie in the old roadshow format, overture, intermission, the works. A full hour of the picture was cut. (The big musical was in its death throes and the studio was fearful of a bust.) I'm not sure how much difference the cutting made but it's clear from the finished product that it didn't help.

No one involved is at his best, but I always liked the movie when I was a kid. Saw it again on cable a couple of years ago and although the subject matter is horribly dated now I still kinda like it. Streisand oversells, as do Cecil Beaton's period costumes (although stills indicate that some of Beaton's best frocks wound up on the cutting room floor). Montand, who can barely be understood, is a disaster. I get a kick out of seeing Jack Nicholson, who seems to have dropped in from another cinematic universe, and I rather enjoy Streisand's English accent. I dislike her more as Daisy, where the Yiddish intonations are annoyingly exaggerated and she's doing weird things with her posture, knees perpertually turned in, slouching in her chair, presumably to emphasize how naive and clumsy Daisy is???

If I'm listening at home of course I would choose the original cast album. But this is nowhere near as awful, say, as A Little Night Music, which is of a badness that goes beyond badness – Pauline Kael remarked at the time that it was as if Harold Prince had never seen a movie before. Bob Fosse must have been in seventh heaven.

[papeetepatrick]

The original film of On a Clear Day was supposed to be a three hour movie in the old roadshow format, overture, intermission, the works. A full hour of the picture was cut. (The big musical was in its death throes and the studio was fearful of a bust.) I'm not sure how much difference the cutting made but it's clear from the finished product that it didn't help.

Thanks, dirac, that explains some of it. Maybe in that big debut-package of Streisand's first films, which I think also included 'the Owl and the Pussycat', sometimes they let her style the songs in that inappropriate way just because she was so hot at the time--which doesn't explain why she sings the songs from ;Hello Dolly' mostly straight (with a few little flourishes as in that marvelous beginning to 'So Long Dearie') and they sound so good (nothing better than that moment with Louis Armstrong in the title song). Probably has to do with Gene Kelly, whose performing credentials may have been something she didn't feel she could argue with, she may have been in awe of him, whereas I don't know what Minnelli was thinking; anyway, he wasn't a performing star. But somehow or other, Kelly got her to be a part of the goings-on, instead of that always breaking-away, somewhat overly narcissistic thing that happened. Of course, that works very well in 'Funny Girl', because she's really the whole show, and it has never had a life of its own after the early days (as far as I know.)

Yeah, true about Lerner's 'tinkering', from the very beginning I remember the tales of composing and writing 'Melinda', and I don't think it's the most inspired song in the show even after all that--the bridge is really pretty banal. I think 'She Wasn't You', as sung on the cast album, is an absolute perfect gem, though.

[sidwich]

sidwich and dirac, do you have any idea why this happened? Did this crew just let Babs do whatever she wanted to, or did they just decide we'll go the commercial vehicle, never was that great a show anyway? Am I just being beastly, and you think it's a good or decent movie? Because Hello, Dolly did end up as a very good film, and Babs works in it beautifully, even if people wanted something else, not someone so young.

As dirac mentioned, "On a Clear Day..." has always had problems, and Lerner was continually revising the show. The versions on Broadway, the road, the movie, etc. were all different. In fact, although City Center's Encores usually goes to great pains to reconstruct the opening night versions of the shows it stages, when they did "On a Clear Day...", the version they performed back in 2000 was also something of a mish-mash. I don't think it's ever been clear what Lerner and Lane's final definitive version of the show is.

Probably has to do with Gene Kelly, whose performing credentials may have been something she didn't feel she could argue with, she may have been in awe of him, whereas I don't know what Minnelli was thinking; anyway, he wasn't a performing star. But somehow or other, Kelly got her to be a part of the goings-on, instead of that always breaking-away, somewhat overly narcissistic thing that happened. Of course, that works very well in 'Funny Girl', because she's really the whole show, and it has never had a life of its own after the early days (as far as I know.)

I have a less favorable opinion of Kelly's "Hello, Dolly!." But I do think the overall material in "Hello, Dolly!" is better than "Funny Girl" which is mostly remembered for Streisand's performance in it, and that may have restrained her a bit. Actually, out of all the directors that I've heard Streisand speak about, the one she is most worshipful of seems to be William Wyler who directed "Funny Girl."

And even though Streisand was always so potent at the time she was often over-the-top in Funny Girl and Hello, Dolly, she did stay reasonably within the songs of a SHOW, instead of tearing them apart and making them into 'Streisand material'. There seems to be no control over much of anything in this grotesque travesty--and the early scenes in Montand's office are ENDLESS. And 'What Did I have that I Don't Have', which is the only one that would lend itself to Streisand's exaggerations, also has no focus to it, although she does push it even here.

I think Streisand has always had a tendency to Streisandize her material. Seth Rudetzsky who is the host of BC/EFA's Broadway Box as well as being a fine musical director in his own right, has a hilarious analysis of Streisand's liberal interpretation of material dating all the way back to the Original Cast Album of "Funny Girl." Who knew that that's what the lyrics of "Cornet Man" actually are?

[papeetepatrick]

But I do think the overall material in "Hello, Dolly!" is better than "Funny Girl" which is mostly remembered for Streisand's performance in it, and that may have restrained her a bit.

I'm surprised I find myself agreeing with this to a great degree, but not in one important sense. But it leads me to try to make some formulations which may or may not be valid as well. But I'd say as a whole work, 'Hello Dolly' is obviousy the better show, a very good show, in fact, even though I'm never going to love it like 'My Fair Lady' or 'South Pacific'. It's a peculiar kind of musical, in that it's essentially unromantic--Dolly is marrying for money and security, which is all right, but that's not usually the stuff of musical comedy, certainly not Emile de Becque and Nellie Forbush, Lt. Cable and Liat. So your remark leads me to observe also that the songs for Hello Dolly! were not written for Streisand, unlike those for Funny Girl--and they also really cannot be sung a la Streisand, that is to say songs like 'Dancing' or 'Put on Your Sunday Clothes' can't (but there again, she has that rousing 'All aboard! All aboard1!' in the latter....

Having said that, I still think 'Funny Girl' has the much better score. 'Hello, Dolly!' has good songs, and the title song has its own ingenuity, even though we know where the first phrase was lifted from and thence paid for. But good songs like 'Before the Parade Passes By' are not IMO on the same level as 'Don't Rain on My Parade', as good as anything in 'Gypsy'. And 'It ONly Takes a Moment' is pretty pale next to 'The Music that Makes Me Dance' or 'Who Are You Now?' or even 'People' (Streisand does 'own' the Funny Girl songs to such a degree that few have ever sung them. Dionne Warwick managed 'People' quite well, and she's the kind of artist who could do it. I don't know Bobby Darin's version of 'Don't Rain on my Parade'.) I also love all the Ziegfeld Follies numbers that Styne wrote, although I agree that a show that ends up being about some ganblin' man is pretty silly, and the extremes of emotion in those very songs I just mentioned are just that, exaggerations. I actually think the Funny Girl score is as good as that for Gypsy, but the comparison ends there. Was interested in what you wrote about 'Cornet Man' and would like to know more specifically how she 'Streisandized' it (great term, by the way, yes, she is non-stop Streisandizing... ) In all the Streisandizing in Funny Girl, I love it, maybe even especially Cornet Man, which I'm crazy about. Capote said Diahann Carroll sang 'A Sleepin' Bee' better than Streisand, who turned it into a 'three-act opera'--or something like that, it's been awhile since I read that. Well yes, for the show, Carroll sounds wonderful, but on the early record, there's hardly anything more wondrous than Streisand's huge opening up of this song. THAT is Streisandizing at its best. I imagine some of what you are saying about 'Cornet Man' has to do with hamming it up like she does with 'It's Not Cricket to Picket' in 'Pins and Needles', where I also think it is very funny (also find her 'Nobody Makes a Pass at Me' hilarious.)

I think there were more shows in the old days with good scores and weak books. Of course, 'On a Clear Day...' is exactly what you both say it is, and is surely beyond repair as a book. But some of the songs are delightful and lovely. 'Funny Girl' even more the case, and 'House of Flowers' perhaps still more, with one Arlen gem after another. I am SO GLAD they have never made a film version of House of Flowers, so that I don't have yet another musical film adaptation to complain about...So that dirac is right that 'they weren't vandalizing a masterpiece', but my major complaint is not even how badly Montand sang Ithat really wouldn't matter that much by itself--oh well, I don't know, Cullum sounds GREAT in all of the songs), but how badly Streisand SANG. I can deal with some of her awful movies, but have a harder time when she sounds bad, because she is such a consummate musician.

So the weakness of the book and thence screenplay don't quite account for a horror like her opening rendition of 'Hurry, It's Lovely Up Here'. In the sleeve of the old LP, I believe we see Barbara Harris with a flower pot, and she sings it as this sort of 'immanence', you feel the gentleness and quiet coaxing, something almost like a warm clucking even, you can almost feel the flowers growing. In the movie, you get this ridiculous scene of Streisand romping through a BOTANICAL GARDEN and it looks straight out of 'I'm five, I'm five, I'm a big girl now I'm five....' And that's all about buying some seedlings flats at the Woolworth's and then overwatering them to death! Lord, it's awful. And 'He Wasn't You' has a vague 'massage parlour feel' to it. I agree with dirac that seeing Jack Nicholson pop up is nice, he comes across as such rifraff in it.

Thanks for thoughtful and informative remarks, sidwich, I do appreciate it.

[sidwich]

So your remark leads me to observe also that the songs for Hello Dolly! were not written for Streisand, unlike those for Funny Girl--and they also really cannot be sung a la Streisand, that is to say songs like 'Dancing' or 'Put on Your Sunday Clothes' can't (but there again, she has that rousing 'All aboard! All aboard1!' in the latter....

I think part of what is interesting about Streisand in "Hello, Dolly!" is that it's really the only role in which she succeeded a major star and would be compared to. Dolly really is Carol Channing's role, and Streisand has been compared unfavorably to her in one way or the other ever since.

I actually think the Funny Girl score is as good as that for Gypsy, but the comparison ends there. Was interested in what you wrote about 'Cornet Man' and would like to know more specifically how she 'Streisandized' it

As stand-alone songs, I think "Funny Girl" may be as good as "Gypsy" but I think as the overall score for a show, "Gypsy" still works better. "Gypsy" also benefits from having a better book, though.

Someone upthread compared Streisand to an opera singer, and I think that's a very good comparison. Streisand is very focused on the creation of the sound coming out of her mouth and the effects that she can create with it. For example, she has this very unorthodox habit of vibratoing through her consonants, which she uses to some really interesting effects in songs. As a consequence, she doesn't let herself get all bogged down by things like consonants.

So for example on "Cornet Man," there's a line that goes ".... silver-plated wah-wah mute..." Streisand apparently doesn't feel like being constricted by the hard "t" consonant of "mute" which would cut off any drawing out of the line or vibrato she might want to use. So what does she do? If you really listen to what she is singing on the Original Cast Album, you will find that she makes it into a "...silver-plated wah-wah mule...." Which obviously doesn't make any sense, but she makes it sound great!

[papeetepatrick]

As stand-alone songs, I think "Funny Girl" may be as good as "Gypsy" but I think as the overall score for a show, "Gypsy" still works better. "Gypsy" also benefits from having a better book, though.

Exactly, in fact one of the strange things about the 'Funny Girl' score is that, even though they're good 'stand alone' songs, they rarely are sung alone, because not one of them not owned by Streisand.

Excellent remarks on the vibrato through the consonant--I mean first-rate! I wouldn't have known to think of it that way, but i was recently noticing how her vibrato in the more obvious definition is one of the most beautiful of which I'm aware, and part of the beauy ot her singing of ballads, etc., so this enhances that even more, i.e., her vibrato is one of the things that marks her uniqueness. But--vibrato through consonants, oh yes, that is very cool, and you can believe I'm going to listen to the 'mule' again soon.

BTW, saw now 'Funny Girl' again for first time since the 60s. The cast album doesn't prepare you for what a boring book it can be, although nothing IMO compared to 'On a Clear Day'. But I remember objecting to 'My Man', not because it was bad, but because I had so loved 'The Music the Makes me Dance', and it is a more lyrical song. However, since the movie is so glitzed up for Streisand's big movie debut, singing a real Fanny Brice torch song, not just 'Second Hand Rose', makes it finally somewhat redeemed as at least somewhat still about Fanny Brice, not just Barbra. And since nothing at all comes after 'My Man' has concluded, this is a very dramatic effect, and for me, renders all the preceding, even though often pretty pedestrian, so that the movie is a big mess, but still you finish it with a sense of satisfaction, and can even recognize it as a perfectly good movie. Also, 'Hie Love Makes Me Beautiful' is very nicely done in the film, and I hadn't remembered it so favorably.

[bart]

The cast album doesn't prepare you for what a boring book it can be [ ... ]

I agree about Funny Girl -- and also about a great many of what I sometimes think of as my "favorite" musicals. Candide certainly fits in this category. And Company.

On a long-distance drive last weekend, I replayed the concert version of Follies. (Cook, Patinkin, Remick, Hearn, etc.) I was exhilerated by the score and orchestration, and moved, a couple of times almost to tears, by the songs and performances. My memories of the original Broadway production, however, are that it was long, and both overpadded and lightweight. I'd be interested to hear what you, Patrick, sidwich, and others, think about Follies.

Also: I'll be seeing Chorus Line again next month. Some of the numbers have, it turns out, kept popping up in my mind ever since the original Broadway run. ("At the Ballet," of course. But also "Nothing.") I have never enjoyed a production, however, with the exception of one in Barcelona about 10 years ago. That was in Catalan, so I could ignore much of the exposition.

Any thoughts about the cast album v. full book performance issue as it applies to Chorus Line?

[papeetepatrick]

Thanks, bart, I too saw 'Follies', and some of the things being called 'innovative' were indeed 'overpadded' and ust pretentious. But there was the thrill of old stars like Alexis Smith (nevermind I didn't know who she was at the time), Yvonne deCarlo, the very old Ethel Shutta singing 'Broadway Baby', but especially for me, Dorothy Collins simply glorious in the one really great role--this was totally unexpected from the 'Hit Parade' girl, and she was superb with John McMartin in 'Too Many Mornings', one of Sondheim's most ravishing songs.

I also saw the original 'Company', but that had such electricity in it, I thought the book was fine. It was just about marriage and 'not being married', so the collection of characters was more interesting than the individual characters--a bit more abstract than musical comedy usually is.

I am very ignorant about 'A Chorus Line' and never saw a stage production of it. I can't say I'm crazy about the Hamlisch music, although it's fine. Did see the movie, which is supposed to be terrible, and I tended to think little of it myself as well.

'Candide' is, I think, an okay, if not great, book as well. Most of them really aren't masterpieces in the playwriting department. Few 'My Fair Lady's and 'South Pacific's, when you think about it, really, and of course, 'Gypsy'. I was very surprised, btw, that Patti Lupone finally triumphed as Mama Rose, and the production didn't last a full year. Recession, yes, but lots of real crap kept running. That was an important production, and I thought it very impressive, glad she won the Tony for it.

[bart]

Thanks for your responses. Wish I still had a memory of Dorothy Collins. I've heard she was amazing and a great surprise. I do remember that Yvonne de Carlo, however, and the feeling of let-down, of a character who wasn't really there. She certainly couldn't do justice to "I'm Still Here," one of my favorite songs. Carol Burnett -- though from a different planet, and completely out of character -- was actually quite good in the concert version. Or was she just being Carol Burnett?

I agree about "Too Many Mornings." Melody and lyrics have never left my memory: "Sometimes I stand in the middle of the floor ... not looking left, not looking right. I dim the lights ... and think about you. Spend sleepness nights ... to think about you." I've never heard a song that expresses so well that particular feeling of bereftness. It's an art song, really.

I've been trying to recollect where I read recently the comment that, 30 years ago, a show's success depended on its score (and, I would add, the lyrics) but that today's audiences look more for an exciting production. That's a great loss. All you have to do is listen to the music from recent big hits to understand how much of a loss.

[papeetepatrick]

"Sometimes I stand in the middle of the floor ... not looking left, not looking right. I dim the lights ... and think about you. Spend sleepness nights ... to think about you."

Aha! but you've given us her other great show-stopper, 'Losing My Mind', with other lyrics like 'The sun comes up...I think about you...the coffee cup...I think about you...'

Here is the first part of 'Too Many Mornings', which is especially gorgeous toward the climax when they sing together. And also worth your time to listen to the original album, Collins's voice was a revelation to me after seeing her in corny things on 'Hit Parade' as a baby. It's very pure and silvery, really a kind of nightingale voice.

Too many mornings

Waking and pretending I reach for you,

Thousands of mornings

Dreaming of my girl.

All that time wasted,

Merely passing through,

Time I could have spent

So content

Wasting time with you.

Too many mornings

Wishing that the room might be filled with you.

Morning to morning,

Turning into days.

All the days that I thought would never end,

All the nights with another day to spend.

All those times I'd look up to see

Sally standing at the door

Sally moving to the bed,

Sally resting in my arms

With her head against my head.

[bart]

Hey, I remember that one too! But have somehow conflated the two songs. So much for relying on memory. Sometimes I wish I'd just stick with Google.

Thanks for the full lyrics, Patrick. They have a very different feel from "Losing my Mind" and are perhaps a more romantic antidote -- or complement -- to that other song.

Both are great. I think I prefer "Losing My Mind," however. Especially that single moment when one "stands in the middle of the room" having forgotten what one was doing because the memory of a loss has taken over. I never really believe Ben when he says that he wakes up so many -- "too many" -- mornings thinking of and yearning for Sally. His own self-description in "The Road You Didn't Take" seems to suggest someone a graet deal more conflicted and confused. And he does seem prone to exagerration, even when he puts himself down. I agree with you completely, however, about the wonderful effect when Sally joins in at the end.

When you think of it, each of the 4 main characters has a soliquy which introduces him/her to the audience and depicts the conflict at the heart of each life. Patinkin's Buddy gets two: ""The Right Girl" is expanded by "Buddy's Blues," in which he flips back and forth between his stage persona and his truly screwed-up inner self. Patinkin's delivery of the lyrics, at very high speed, is one of the miracles of the concert recording, I think.

And then there are those lovely little pastiche songs ("I'm Still Here," an anthem to survival which incidentally includes a couple of singers about American politics in the 40s-50s -- "Paree" -- "Listen to the Rain on the Roof" -- "One More Kiss") which provide some distance and emotional relief from the quandaries of the 4 main characters. What do you think about Elaine Stritch's world-weary, God-my-feet-hurt version of "Broadway Baby"? At first it disconcerted me, but I've come to appreciate it. That whiney, drawn-out "o-w-w-w-w-w" groan, which is given in the written text as a simple "Oh" -- I love it. I"ve met this woman, many times, on the Broadway bus and places like that.

Perhaps you have to have lived a long time before you can really appreciate the libretto of Follies. And perhaps you have to have grown up with access to an older Broadway before you can really appreciate the score. How did Sondheim accomplish such a work at such a relatively young age?

[papeetepatrick]

I like to revive our old thread here when I have caught up with some new things, and the Tonys are coming up, I believe I saw, but I don't think I have heard any of the new scores, and haven't been to a show for a couple of years.

Anyway, just checked out of NYPL the CD's of In the Heights and Billy Elliott, the Tony winners for Best Musical of 2008 and 2009. 'In the Heights' also won Best Score, but 'Billy Elliott' lost that one to 'Next to Normal', which I'll also get to listen to in a few weeks.

I've listened all the way through to 'Billy Eiliott', with music by Elton John, and I suppose it sounds condescending to say it's 'serviceable', as Miss Jean Brodie said of 'chyrysanthemums, such suh-viceable flowahs...', but that's the best I can do. Is he ever going to be a Great Master? I thought I was going to say yes, he already was with 'Pinball Wizard', but The Who wrote that, and Elton just sang it (I never mentioned the Who's score of 'TOMMY' here, and that I love, and the movie is super, I even own it). There's even this rather insipid song called 'Merry Christmas, Maggie Thatcher', which seems a little reached-for to me. There's also a song called 'The Letter' which may be famous itself, or which may sound just like some other song that's famous, I think that's the one that's supposed to be the 'important song', though, because they reprise it. The lyrics are by Lee Hall, who wrote the original screenplay.

I remember some BTers seeing 'Billy Elliott' and raving over the dancing, because that's the story, as it had been in the original film, which I've also never seen (any thoughts on the film?). Would like to hear more about this show and if you enjoyed the score. I really didn't think it was at all bad, just sort of second-hand and not very inspired.

What I've heard of 'In the Heights' is a different thing, though, even though I haven't heard both discs yet. Yes, this is the kind of 'new, fresh blood' that B'way is always going to need in some form from time to time. I liked all of the few tracks I've listened to thus far, and I'm crazy about Caribbean music, meringue, salsa, reggae, Cuban, all of it. It's great to hear this sound on B'way, and I'd like to see the show. Miranda's music is FINE. I spend so much time at Washington Heights in the summer I guess I didn't think about going to a show about it.

Sidwich (and anybody else), have you seen any of these shows in the last few years, or heard any first-hand reports of them? I also completely missed that there was a B'way version of 9 to 5, with Dolly Parton and others putting together a big garish thing. Well, I saw it lasted 4 months though.

Will say more about the Miranda score (they were doing a little bit of the dancing in the 2008 Macy's Parade on the street that I saw, but you can't tell much from that) when I have listened to the whole album.