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| Allegro; The "lost" R & H musical | |
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| Topic Started: Jul 23 2009, 05:31 PM (112 Views) | |
| panzer the great & terrible | Jul 23 2009, 05:31 PM Post #1 |
Mouth Breather
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After Oklahoma, Carousel, and State Fair, all monumental hits and before South Pacific and The King and I there was a musical called Allegro that was a flop by Rogers and Hammerstein standards: it ran ten months and didn't pay back its investment. It was an intensely personal project. After virtually inventing the modern musical with a little trifle called Show Boat, Hammerstein spent more than ten years in the weeds with one flop after another, but then became the most successful librettist/lyricist since W. S. Gilbert when he teamed up with Rodgers. This triumph took its toll -- Hammerstein found himself elected to boards and tied to all sorts of causes with no time to write. Everybody wanted a piece of him. So, being a genius, he wrote a show about it, and this is the show. He and Rodgers both believed to their dying days that it was their great unfinished work, and that a new second act would fix it, but I don't think so -- I think it's already great, but only a wealthy audience can identify with a character who's too successful for his own good. Most folks envy success, and you can't change that. In any case it was the first experimental musical that made an impression, and its influence is incalculable. The reason I'm nattering on so is that there's now a complete 2 CD recording of the score with three (count 'em) divas: Marni Nixon, Liz Callaway, and our greatest living singing actress, Audra McDonald; and it's as good as we could hope for. How good? Well, put it this way: during the overture there was a tune I'd never heard before, and it made me burst into tears. I don't do stuff like that. This is the real deal, folks. If you like musicals, treat yourself. Michael Tilson Thomas' orchestrations alone are worth the price. And if they ever redo my personal favorite R&H show, which I was lucky enough to see in its original run, Pipe Dream, I'll rave about that too. Richard Rogers may have been a stuffed shirt, as some maintain, but he wrote some of the best melodies ever for that show, and Hammerstein's book was about perfect. The lyrics, um, could have been better, but you can't have everything, and they aren't anywhere near as bad as the Flower Drum Song lyrics, not to mention the even more embarrassing ones in Sound of Music. "Doe, a deer, a female deer?" Please. Anyway, Allegro. Buy it. Important show biz history. Edited by panzer the great & terrible, Aug 10 2009, 07:30 PM.
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| We Wear Short Shorts Flying Purple People Eater | |
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| panzer the great & terrible | Aug 10 2009, 07:38 PM Post #2 |
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Mouth Breather
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Now I've listened to it three times and read the script, and I still think the second act is solid, but I now think that Hammerstein's mistake was attacking the upper middle class when they thought themselves above criticism. (He ran into the same problem again with Pipe Dream.) Today I noticed that the most important and best line in the show is delivered on the CD by Steven Sondheim. How cool is that? (He worked as a gofer on the show in his teens). My take is that the one and only problem with Allegro! is that it was ahead of its time. It's a pity that R & H didn't revive it in the late 50's, when its message came into fashion, but we are fortunate that Sondheim learned this lesson and continues to improve his own shows. Thank God for perfectionists. The most unusual thing about Allegro! is that all but one of the best songs are in the second act. Most musicals blow their wad in Act One, Show Boat for example. |
| We Wear Short Shorts Flying Purple People Eater | |
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| JazzGuyy | Aug 12 2009, 08:20 AM Post #3 |
Balcony Gang, Foist Class
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I still like the stuff Rodgers wrote with Hart much better than the Hammerstein-era stuff. Hart's more idiomatic American lyrics kept Rodgers' feet more solidly planted on the ground and forced him to write American melodies. With Hammerstein, we get a lot more of Rodgers trying to write European music with lots of Viennese-sounding waltzes and stuff. I'm not saying it was all bad (there are some great songs from this latter period) but the Hart stuff is consistently better and more American, IMNSHO. |
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| panzer the great & terrible | Aug 12 2009, 09:29 AM Post #4 |
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Mouth Breather
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Many share your opinion, jazzy, and I could easily do without the scores of Me and Juliet, The Sound of Music and The Flower Drum Song, but Rodgers always wrote nifty waltzes ("The Most Beautiful Girl in the World" for one), and always was the most European-inspired of the songwriters, possibly excepting Kern, Vernon Duke and Kurt Weill, who WERE European. The whole idea that Hammerstein was somehow more European than Hart never has made sense. They grew up in the same neighborhood and went to the same college. Hart's parents were European immigrants and Hammerstein's weren't. What Hart was that Hammerstein wasn't was a poet. Even Hammerstein's best lyrics tend towards the prosy. What Hammerstein was that Hart wasn't was a dramatist. Sondheim could never have happened without him. I think it's time he got his propers again. He was the pioneer of the musical as it exists today: not a pop tune generating machine, but a drama with music. I suspect there's plenty of room for both, and as I believe I mentioned, it's nice to have some "new" Rodgers songs. "A Fellow Needs a Gal" is as good a tune as he ever wrote, even if the lyric is a little Broadway-folksy. "The Gentleman Is a Dope," the one song from the show that became a standard, has snappier words. The revelation of the recording is the song "Allegro," which I had never heard and is brilliant, words and music. |
| We Wear Short Shorts Flying Purple People Eater | |
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| JazzGuyy | Aug 12 2009, 12:58 PM Post #5 |
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Balcony Gang, Foist Class
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I think there's a reason why the child of immigrants would try to be more American than someone who wasn't. This is a very common phenomenon in the life of children of immigrants born in the U.S. or who themselves came to the U.S. as very young children. It has been cited with reference to Berlin and the Gershwins so finding Hart more American (at least to my perception) than Hammerstein is natural. By being more American, I mean down at the street level with the vernacular language and attitudes. Immigrants' kids just seem to try harder to be part of the culture. They feel the need to prove something. Hammerstein came from a wealthier, artier milieu and reflects it, I think. He didn't have to prove to anyone that he belonged here. Rodgers always wanted to be a composer of higher level music though even his best in this respect (the "Victory At Sea" score) isn't particularly original but it is well crafted. I will say that you always got well crafted melodies from Rodgers. |
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| mort bakaprevski | Aug 12 2009, 01:27 PM Post #6 |
Soony Roony!
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For what it's worth ($1.25??), none of Rodgers collaborations with Hammerstein are in my favorite songs list... lots Hart collaborations are. Few of the Hammerstein numbers have made it into the jazz musicians library either. I think Hart's lyrics were just more sophisticated & Rodgers followed suit with more sophisticated music!! |
| “You’ve got to take the bitter with the sour.” | |
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| panzer the great & terrible | Aug 12 2009, 09:10 PM Post #7 |
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Mouth Breather
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I dunno. The Ray Charles "Oh What a Beautiful Morning" is a side I love, and the Coltrane "My Favorite Things" has attracted some attention. Besides, my point was that Hammerstein was a playwright first, so this jabber about what jazz guys like is off topic. I suggest you wise guys buy the album and see what you think -- I bet you'll be surprised. It's as well-produced as a cast album can be, considering the idiotic way they're recorded. At least there's no woman on the album who sounds like a bee. I'm a stage director and I like what works on stage and most Rodgers and Hart musicals don't -- The Boys From Syracuse and Pal Joey are the exceptions. I had a hit with Syracuse once in a college production and I'm sure I could have one with Joey if I could find some fool to invest in it. I'm not about to argue that Hart's songs are inferior to anybody's, but all this bull about Hammerstein has to stop because it has no purpose and makes no sense. It's an attitude people adopted in the Fifties when R & H tried to make themselves middle-calss icons and the smart people got pissed; it's irrelevant today. Oklahoma! is playing somewhere tonight, and tomorrow night, and every night. That's reality. So is South Pacific. And now, I bet, Allegro is too: it certainly deserves to. I'd direct it. Hell, I'd direct Pipe Dream on Broadway, and I bet I'd make money. That completely forgotten show with no standards has a great book and is entertaining as hell. Problem was, it opened in the most straight-laced part of the Eisenhower era, and the critics expressed great shock that whores and bums were portrayed sympathetically. These were critics who patronized whores, of course, and were bums. |
| We Wear Short Shorts Flying Purple People Eater | |
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| JazzGuyy | Aug 13 2009, 02:19 AM Post #8 |
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Balcony Gang, Foist Class
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Paul, I have no problem distinguishing between the worth of the music and the overall musical. There have certainly been many great musicals where the music wasn't the greatest and many flops with fabulous music (all of Harold Arlen's attempts to do a Broadway musical come to mind). There are also musicals that were great in their time that few would care to see today (like most Gershwin ones). I also will admit that Rodgers did produce some great songs while working with Hammerstein. Morty and I just think he did more great stuff with Hart. Is it just because of jazz or pop singers and musicians doing them. I don't think so. I have heard an old version of Allegro which doesn't ring any bells right now. I will try to dig it out and sample the music. |
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| mort bakaprevski | Aug 13 2009, 06:12 AM Post #9 |
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Soony Roony!
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Yeah, I wasn't trying to be a "wise guy." I was just treating this subject like one of our typical open-ended threads... free to go anywhere we wanted on the whim of the moment. I guess my problem is that I don't particularly care for musicals. Love the music that comes from them... but really don't have much use for the stage productions. My loss, I guess!! |
| “You’ve got to take the bitter with the sour.” | |
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| JazzGuyy | Aug 13 2009, 07:08 AM Post #10 |
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Balcony Gang, Foist Class
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I think musicals are an acquired taste. One of the things that doesn't help is that the plots to many musicals tend to be rather silly or very maudlin or both as do those of the musical's uptown cousin, the opera. Even some great musicals have plots that are not much beyond being basic and often corny melodramas. "Show Boat" is the classic example of that, IMO. The only famous musicals that I think of as both great and mostly original are "Guys and Dolls", "Kiss Me Kate" and maybe "Pal Joey". The rest are simple plots but which, when combined with the music and the dancing, become something much greater than the parts. |
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