There is an interesting subgenre of the Broadway musical that owes its existence to some of classical music’s most shameless melodists. And it is largely attributable to the team of Robert Wright and George Forrest.
Wright and Forrest, who were lifelong partners, both professionally and personally, knew a good tune when they heard one, and they were quick to appropriate the most insinuating of them as threads to be woven into the tapestries of some rather enduring musicals.
Perhaps the most famous of these is “Kismet” (1953), which draws on the seductive lyricism of Alexander Borodin. I’m sure you’re familiar with its hit tunes, “Baubles, Bangles and Beads” and “Stranger in Paradise.”
But there was also “Gypsy Lady” (1946) after Victor Herbert, and “Anya” (1965) after Rachmaninoff. Most ambitious of all was “Magdalena” (1948), a collaboration with Brazil’s still (at the time) very-much-alive and irrepressible Heitor Villa-Lobos.
Wright and Forrest owed much to Edwin Lester, impresario of the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera, who first commissioned a number of these, which were presented as operettas. LACLO also revived works by of Sigmund Romberg, Victor Herbert, and Oscar Straus. The organization made its debut in 1938 with a revival of “Blossom Time,” a 1916 Viennese pastiche operetta after the music of Franz Schubert.
Wright and Forrest were natural choices to retool “The Great Waltz,” after Johann Strauss II, which they did for a 1949 production by LACLO. This is the version that was used for a 1970 London stage revival and a 1972 motion picture remake.
The original musical was conceived by Hassard Short, who also directed “Carmen Jones,” after Bizet, in 1943. (For once, Wright and Forrest had nothing to do with it.) Moss Hart wrote the original book. The lyrics were by Desmond Carter. This in turn was adapted from a 1930 pastiche operetta by Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Julius Bittner, “Waltzer aus Wien” (“Waltzes from Vienna”). A film adaptation from 1938 sported a screenplay and new lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein. The two films, which focus on different periods of Strauss’ life, are actually quite distinct.
But before Wright and Forrest’s work on any of these came “Song of Norway” (1944), after Edvard Grieg, who was born on this date in 1843. The team cannily recognized that one hummable melody after another virtually poured from the sleeves of Norway’s most famous composer, whose music must have been very much in the air during his centenary.
The show is a fictionalized account of the lives of three childhood friends: Grieg, his sweetheart Nina Hagerup, and the “poet” Rikard Nordraak. In reality, Nordraak was also a composer – in fact the composer of Norway’s national anthem! – but presumably, to keep it clear for American audiences, there was room in Bergen and Troldhaugen for only one.
“Song of Norway” was a hit on Broadway and ran for 860 performances. George Balanchine provided the choreography for the original production. The dancers were members of the Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo, including Maria Tallchief, who married Balanchine during the show’s run.
A film was announced for 1950, but didn’t materialize for another 20 years. Florence Henderson, by then a familiar presence in American living rooms as Mrs. Brady on “The Brady Bunch,” played Nina. Grieg was portrayed by Norwegian actor Toralv Maurstad, and Nordraak was played by American tenor Frank Porretta. Porretta retired from the stage in his early 40s, but not before leaving an indelible mark on American opera. He spent the second half of his career as choir director at St. John’s Church in Darien, Connecticut.
A transparent attempt to capitalize on the popularity of “The Sound of Music,” the film of “Song of Norway” did not succeed. It did, however, give Edward G. Robinson another unlikely opportunity to play a Norwegian, 25 years after “Our Vines Have Tender Grapes.”
Here are the opening credits, restored, and in their proper aspect ratio. I suppose if you’re going to give it a chance, this is the way it should be seen. That’s pianist John Ogdon on the soundtrack.
But perhaps you’re satisfied with a muddy, cropped, substandard TV print – even though the film was originally presented in theaters in Cinerama.
A condensed version on radio, brought to you by the American railroad!
In real life, Nordraak met Grieg in Copenhagen in 1864, and the two became fast friends. For a time, Nordraak had resigned himself to a career in business at the behest of his father, but gradually his musical interests prevailed. Grieg encouraged him to join him in forging a Norwegian national sound. Sadly, the following year, Nordraak was studying abroad when he was stricken by tuberculosis. He died in Paris at the age of 23.
Due to his early demise, he composed only about 40 pieces, many of them songs, works for male choir, and piano works. He also wrote incidental music for a play, “Mary Stuart in Scotland.” Interestingly, Grieg was of Scottish descent, on his father’s side. His great-grandfather settled in Norway in 1770.
Nordraak, “Scherzo Capriccio”
Nordraak, “Purpose” from “Mary Stuart in Scotland”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrA1GXG_qrg
Nordraak, Norwegian National Anthem
Grieg, “Funeral March for Rikard Nordraak”
Nina sings Nordraak’s “Holder du af mig” (“If you love me”) in 1889. She was 43 or 44 at the time. It’s possible that that’s Grieg himself at the keyboard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5XCnIVud1c
Unquestionably Grieg
Wright and Forrest were always credited equally as composer-lyricists, but it was really Forrest who worked with the music. ”Kismet” earned them a Tony Award for Best Musical in 1954, and in 1995 they were honored with an ASCAP Foundation Richard Rodgers Award.
Grieg compositions that were used in “Song of Norway” include the Piano Concerto in A minor (“Prelude & Legend”), the “Norwegian Dance No. 2” (“Freddy and His Fiddle”), the Violin Sonata No. 2 and “Waltz” from the “Lyric Pieces” (“Now”), “Wedding Day at Troldhaugen” (“Strange Music”), “One Balmy Summer Eve” from “Five Poems,” Op.26, and Scherzo in E from the “Lyric Pieces” (“Midsummer’s Eve”), and “I Love You” from “Melodies of the Heart,” Op.5.
The fjords are alive with the sound of Edvard Grieg! Happy birthday to Norway’s most-beloved composer!
