Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Broadway

Broadway Musicals Celebrate July 4th

With the Fourth of July still six days away, I was trying to come up with a way to honor some aspect of the country’s rich musical heritage – it is, after all, the last weekend before the holiday – but I didn’t want to start clobbering everybody with Sousa marches just yet.

I found my solution on Broadway: both of my specialty shows today are connected in some way or another to classic American musical theater.

The playlist on “Sweetness and Light,” the light music show, is constructed on works that were actually staged on the Great White Way, including Eubie Blake & Noble Sissle’s “Shuffle Along” (the 1921 all-Black musical that spawned the breakout hit “I’m Just Wild about Harry”), Leonard Bernstein’s “On the Town” (the ballet music, before it was distilled into the familiar “Three Dance Episodes,” with a 24-year-old Bernstein conducting), George Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess” (conceived by the composer as an opera, but produced on Broadway several times over the decades before finally being elevated to the pantheon), and Richard Rodgers & Lorenz Hart’s “On Your Toes” (the climactic “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” sequence, which we’ll enjoy on Rodgers’ birthday).

We’ll get your toes tapping, for the most part, but also include a grand piano fantasy on themes from “Porgy” by Earl Wild.

It’s showtime, this Saturday morning at 11:00 EDT/8:00 PDT.

Then later, on “The Lost Chord,” a program that revives unusual and neglected repertoire, we’ll come at the same source from a different perspective, as we’ll hear concert works by composers of notable Broadway hits.

Vladimir Dukelsky was born in what is now Belarus, but when he settled in the United States, his friend, George Gershwin suggested a name change. Thereafter, he was known as Vernon Duke. As Duke, he composed such standards as “April in Paris” and “Autumn in New York,” and he had a hit show in “Cabin in the Sky.”

As Dukelsky, he had works championed by Serge Koussevitzky and choreographed by Léonide Massine and George Balanchine. We’ll hear a Piano Concerto he composed at the age of 19 at the request of Arthur Rubinstein.

Meredith Willson is best-known for his Broadway smashes “The Music Man” and “The Unsinkable Molly Brown,” but he emerged from the classical music world, as a flutist who played with John Philip Sousa and the New York Philharmonic. We’ll hear Willson’s Symphony No. 2, subtitled “The Missions of California.”

I hope you’ll join me in giving my regards to Broadway with “Broadway Lights” on “Sweetness and Light” (at 11:00 a.m. EDT/8:00 a.m. PDT), and “Broad Talents from Broadway” on “The Lost Chord” (at 7:00 p.m. EDT/4:00 p.m. PDT), both of them on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Stream them, wherever you are, at the link:

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

IMAGES: “Shuffle Along” sheet music and (top to bottom) Sissle & Blake, Rodgers & Hart, and Meredith & Rini Willson

June 28, 2025
Papp’s Pirates on Broadway A Fan’s Look Back

I caught Joseph Papp’s hip, self-aware revival of “The Pirates of Penzance” when it moved to Broadway in the 1980s. In common with his Broadway Shakespeare revivals, Papp’s “Pirates” had its origins elsewhere (for Shakespeare it was the open-air Delacorte Theater in Central Park; for “Pirates” it was the Public Theater’s headquarters in the former Astor Library on Lafayette Street in Lower Manhattan). While rapturously received, the ‘80s “Pirates,” was certainly not for Gilbert & Sullivan purists – the reduction of Sullivan’s orchestration is a horror, and the voices were not exactly D’Oyly Carte – but my, was it a lot of fun!

By the time I was able to see it, Kevin Kline, Angela Lansbury, and Linda Ronstadt were off making the movie – which, I’m sorry to say, turned out stagy, corny, and disappointing. (What worked in the theater did not transfer well to film.) However, George Rose, as the very model of a modern Major General, and Tony Azito, as the Sergeant of Police, somehow continued their Broadway run, even as they too appeared in the movie.

How amazing Azito was in this show. It’s regrettable that the editing choices for the video linked below allow only glimpses of his incredible dexterity. (Azito did all his own choreography.) The police are reimagined somewhat in the style of the Keystone Kops. Azito himself is a human rubber band, who can replicate and even surpass the most improbable contortions of the great physical comedians of yore. (He does a wonderful Groucho dance.) Sadly, Azito died of AIDS in 1995. He was so talented. Justifiably, he was nominated for a Tony for his performance (as was Rose, who didn’t end well either, murdered in Haiti only a few years later, in 1988). I was very fortunate also to be able to catch Azito in “Amphigorey,” a musical revue based on the macabre comic creations of Edward Gorey, during a tryout run at Philadelphia’s Plays and Players Theater in the 1992.

Papp’s “Pirates” moved to Broadway in 1981 and ran for 787 performances. It was recognized with a Tony Award for Best Revival and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Musical.

By the time I caught it, James Belushi had slipped on the seven-league boots of the Pirate King. You wouldn’t think he would be on a level with Kline, who transformed the character into a post-Errol Flynn matinee idol, with puffy shirt and plunging neckline, as apt to tumble off the stage as swing on a rope. Delightfully, Belushi was every bit as nimble as his famous brother, doing flips off trampolines and carousing most energetically.

You can watch the Kline incarnation, captured prior to its Broadway transfer, here:

By coincidence, I see “Pirates” is back in Midtown, now at the Todd Haimes Theater on West 42nd Street, as “Pirates! A Penzance Musical,” with David Hyde Pierce as the Major General. From what I understand, the new production takes a quasi-meta approach, with the historical Gilbert & Sullivan passing through New Orleans, where a local production of their comic operetta is being staged. I have my doubts about “this jazzy-bluesy vision of the crowd-pleasing classic, in an outrageously clever romp sizzling with Caribbean rhythms and French Quarter flair.” But who knows, it might also be fun. Not sure I’ll be stumbling over myself to see it, but I’d go if somebody offered me a cheap ticket.

April 6, 2025
Chita Rivera A Broadway Legend Remembered

Chita Rivera was a force to be reckoned with. A dancer of remarkable stamina and electric stage presence, Rivera clawed her way back to the top after having her leg crushed in an automobile accident. She’s said to have danced as well in her 70s as she did as a younger woman (albeit without the flying splits and backflips).

Sadly, Chita was cheated whenever her Broadway triumphs were translated to the big screen. However, the recasting of “West Side Story” opened the door for Rita Moreno.

Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics for the showstopper, “America,” caused some controversy from the start, due to of its ironic barbs about life in Puerto Rico, but Leonard Bernstein’s dynamic take on the huapango and Moreno’s energy sold the number (with the lyrics tweaked over the years).

Rivera was the recipient of two Tony Awards (she was nominated for ten), two Drama Desk Awards, and a Drama League Award. She was the first Latina and Latino American to receive a Kennedy Center Honor, in 2002, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 2009. She was awarded a Tony for Lifetime Achievement in 2018.

Besides “West Side Story,” she also created roles in “Bye Bye Birdie,” “Chicago,” and “Kiss of the Spider Woman.

Rivera was 91 years-old. R.I.P.

January 31, 2024
Vernon Duke Autumn in New York Composer

It’s autumn in New York!

Vernon Duke (né Vladimir Dukelsky) was born in what is now Belarus on this date in 1903. In Kyiv, he studied composition under Reinhold Gliere. He left the USSR in 1920, traveling to New York, where he was befriended by George Gershwin. In fact, it was Gershwin who suggested a name-change to something a bit more comprehensible to American audiences. (Gershwin himself was born Jacob Gershowitz.)

For a time, Duke ping-ponged back and forth to Europe, where he fulfilled a commission by Serge Diaghilev (for the ballet “Zephyr and Flora”). The work impressed Sergei Prokofiev, and the two became fast friends. Dukelsky’s Symphony No. 1 was given its premiere in Paris, under Serge Koussevitzky, on the same program as excerpts from Prokofiev’s “The Fiery Angel.”

Around the same time, Duke began contributing material to musical comedies in London. This laid the groundwork for a return to New York in 1929. There, he continued to composed “serious” works, while insinuating himself into the Broadway scene. A number of his songs – “April in Paris,” “Autumn in New York,” “Taking a Chance on Love,” “I Can’t Get Started” – have since become standards.

When Gershwin died in 1937, Duke stepped in to complete his unfinished score for “The Goldwyn Follies,” for which he contributed a couple of ballets (choreographed by George Balanchine) and the song, “Spring Again.” His greatest success came in 1940, with the Broadway show, “Cabin in the Sky.”

Here’s a rare concert broadcast of his Symphony No. 3:

A number of his concert works have been recorded in recent years, including this Piano Concerto for Arthur Rubinstein:

His Cello Concerto, performed by Samuel Magill, then of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra:

“Autumn in New York”

“Brooklyn Barcarolle”

PHOTO: Duke (right) with Ira Gershwin

September 27, 2023
George M Cohan Broadway’s Yankee Doodle Boy

Of course, everyone knows that Broadway luminary George M. Cohan was born on the Fourth of July.

Except he wasn’t. This was one Yankee Doodle Dandy who was actually born on July 3rd.

Cohan was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on this date in 1878, but he and his family always maintained he was a Yankee Doodle Boy.

Cohan was tied to the theater from childhood. He first appeared on stage as a violinist at the age of 8. Later, he became famous for his wisecracks and eccentric dancing.

He could be quite temperamental in his youth – a trait he apparently tamed – more than once declaring himself “through with the theater.” If he felt particularly ill-used, he was known to walk out on a performance.

He also became a prolific tin pan alley songsmith, displaying a rare gift. His songs were noted for their clever lyrics and catchy melodies, and a number of them remain immediately recognizable, including “Give My Regards to Broadway,” “It’s a Grand Old Flag,” “Over There,” “Mary is a Grand Old Name,” “Always Leave Them Laughing When You Say Goodbye,” and of course “The Yankee Doodle Boy.”

But it soon became apparent he was not just a song and dance man. In fact, he became regarded as the most versatile figure in American theater. From 1904 to 1920, with his friend and business partner Sam H. Harris, he produced over 50 Broadway musicals, plays, and revues. He pioneered the “book musical,” with his songs serving a dramatic story. He was also noted for his stirring, flag-waving finales.

But it wasn’t all about simply pleasing the crowd in his own vehicles. He also earned plaudits for his performance in Eugene O’Neill’s “Ah, Wilderness!”

Cohan himself was a playwright and also a theater owner. For a time, he and Harris owned Chicago’s Grand Opera House, which in 1912 became known as George M. Cohan’s Grand Opera House. In 1926, it was renamed the Four Cohan’s Theatre. It reverted to the Grand Opera House with its sale to the Shubert family in 1928.

So many of Cohan’s songs are still so well known, I suppose in part because of the Cagney movie (“Yankee Doodle Dandy,” released in 1942), but also because we used to sing them in school, and heard them at parades, and they’re just good solid tunes from a more innocent age that allowed one to be proud and uncomplicated.

Cohan did live to see the film, by the way. “My God,” he commented of Cagney’s performance, “what an act to follow.” The Academy thought so too, as Cagney was honored with an Oscar for Best Actor. The film also won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Cohan’s obituary in the New York Times described him as perhaps the greatest song and dance man in Broadway history. FDR awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and Deems Taylor, president of ASCAP and a composer himself, described him as a genius. He died of abdominal cancer in 1942 at the age of 64.

Cohan wasn’t the only American icon to claim the Fourth of July as his birthdate. Louis Armstrong also celebrated the anniversary of his birth on July 4th. The truth is he didn’t know when he was born, so he and his manager selected Independence Day. What could be more American than that? It wasn’t until the 1980s, well after Armstrong’s death, in 1971, that a researcher discovered Satchmo’s baptismal records and learned that his authentic birthdate was August 4, 1901.

You know who WAS born on the Fourth of July? ME!

For the record, if I didn’t know when I was born, I would have chosen Halloween.

Happy birthday, George M. Cohan!

Cohan’s obituary in the New York Times

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0703.html

Enrico Caruso sings “Over There”

Cagney and company with “You’re a Grand Old Flag”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgdyJX1jaUI

The film’s trailer

From a PBS documentary

George M. Cohan speaks

PHOTO: Cohan statue in Times Square

July 3, 2023

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