“She Loves Me”: Miklos Laszlo’s Hungarian Play As A Modern Broadway-Operetta?
Many great operetta things come from Hungary; and you might add, many great musical comedy things too. Emmerich Kalman wanted
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The Game Changers Of Broadway: Hammerstein, Schirmer, Cohan & Co..
Who were the truly instrumental people who caused America to develop the largest and most influential entertainment industry in the
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THE FORTUNE TELLER: Comic opera in 3 acts by Victor Herbert
When the ambitious young soprano of the famed Bostonians company, Alice Nielsen, decided to break away from the group and
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Michael W. Balfe’s “Satanella,” Plus: A Contemporary Cantata And “Merman’s Apprentice”
It is not often that I write about recordings. Since my massive listening-writing effort of The Musical Theatre on Record,
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The Comic Operetta “Candide” And The Germans
The popularity of Candide in Germany can be attributed to several factors: the continuing high profile of Leonard Bernstein, the
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1923 Yiddish Operetta Astounds New York City Audience
An unlikely current hit, the 1923 Yiddish musical Di goldene Kale (“The Golden Bride”) by Joseph Rumshinsky, emerged after years
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“Looking for orchids in a corn field”: Nadine Secunde Talks About The Changing Art of Operetta Singing
American soprano Nadine Secunde is probably not someone you’d immediately associate with operetta or musical comedy, or light(er) music in
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The “Circus Princess” Triumphs in Vienna: Kalman’s New Musical Piece the Operetta Sensation of Europe
Will he “come back”? Will Emmerich Kalman succeed in duplicating the tremendous success of his Countess Maritza, which has been
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Chita Rivera Sings Robert Stolz? The Cast Album Of “The Visit”
Listening to Kander & Ebb’s The Visit – their adaptation of Durrenmatt’s Besuch der alten Dame – with an operetta
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“Csardasfürstin” Conference in Budapest
This week-end, the Budapest Operetta Theatre is hosting a conference on Die Csardasfürstin, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of that
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Angeline And Her Tattooed Man: Victor Herbert’s ‘Funny’ Songs
You might say: wow, the Americans are catching on! Or differently put, the announcement of the latest concert by the
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Broadway Does Operetta. Or: From Dallas To Philadelphia
The folks in Philadelphia are at it again this weekend. They will be presenting a concert called Broadway Does Operetta,
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“Spring Awakening” With Deaf Actors
I must confess that I admired more than loved Spring Awakening in its 2007 Broadway premiere, and really didn’t care
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“The Riviera Girl”: Kálmán on Broadway 1917
Emmerich Kálmán’s Csardasfürstin opened on Broadway, at the New Amsterdam Theater, on 24 September 1917 under the new American title
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Emmerich Kálmán’s “Die Csárdásfürstin”: A Historic Overview
One of the most successful, and certainly the most widely enduring of Kálmán’s operettas, Die Csárdásfürstin was nevertheless composed to
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Coming Up On Broadway: “Dames At Sea” And Other Delights
With the regular theater season in Europe re-opening with some funky returning operetta productions, e.g. at the Komische Oper Berlin
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Musical Of The Month At NY’s Public Library: “Golden Dawn”
The New York Public Library is devoting its current “Musical of the Month” to Emmerich Kálmán’s Golden Dawn, a show
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Could “The Song Of Norway” Be Staged In Disney’s “Frozen” Fasion For A New Generation?
If you have any teenage girls – or younger – in your circle of friends, chances are high that you’ve
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The Origins Of Lerner & Loewe’s “Brigadoon”
You will recall that the Ohio Light Opera presented Lerner & Loewe’s Brigadoon as part of their 2015 summer season.
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“Hamilton”: America’s Founding Fathers Set To Hip-Hop
Quadruple threat librettist-composer-lyricist-actor Lin-Manuel Miranda (In the Heights) has conceived an utterly original, ambitious, irresistible new musical inspired by Ron
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“Amazing Grace”: A Slave Trader Musical
This is a reasonably compelling, resourcefully staged, and certainly richly designed story of slave trader John Newton and how he
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A Live-Stage “Show Boat” On DVD: For The First Time?
When the San Francisco Opera puts on a show like Show Boat it raises expectations. The company has a chorus
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A Black “Merry Widow of Malagawi”: Re-Imagining A Classic
Another Merry Widow? Yeah, we hear you. (And you’re right.) It’s probably the most over-produced operetta in operetta history, together
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A New “Duchess of Chicago” From Ohio Light Opera
As everyone knows, the Ohio Light Opera is one of the prime performance venues for lesser known works of Emmerich
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“The Golden Apple”: A Holy Grail For Musical Theatre Buffs
Applause now, please, for PS Classics and Lyric Stage of Irving, Texas, whose combined resources bring us the first complete
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German Cast Recordings Of “West Side Story”
Today, the Opera Leipzig will present a new production of West Side Story. Not at the Musikalische Komödie, but in
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Ethan Mordden’s New American Operetta History
Anyone who has walked into a bookshop in the USA recently will have noticed that Ethan Mordden’s attractively packaged Anything
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Uncool (And Proudly So): Mel Atkey’s “Breaking Into Song”
Mel Atkey’s new book Breaking Into Song has arrived: a collection of articles, essays and interviews from the past 35
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“Girls With No Clothes To Speak Of”: Broadway-Operetta Then And Now
There is a renewed interest in operetta internationally, not just the French and Austrian variety of the genre, but also
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Cole Porter In Hollywood: Or What We Can Learn From John Wilson
Yes, Mr. John Wilson and his orchestra are at it again. After they presented Cole Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate at
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Josh Groban Sets An Example With “Stages”
Here it is: a album of Josh Groban singing musical comedy. The American pop tenor has squeezed 15 famous (and
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Something Rotten! New Shakespeare-Spectacle On Broadway
This very clever new musical is a rib-tickling winner across the board, a hilarious riff on Shakespeare and his times.
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“Doctor Zhivago”: Laughably Derivative?
Not only does this overblown musical of Boris Pasternak’s classic novel not measure up to the sweep and majesty of
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“Shall We Dance?” Kelli O’Hara As Anna Leonowens
This opulent revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s enduring 1951 classic certainly has much to commend it. For starters, theatergoers have
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Kander & Ebb: “The Visit” Starring Chita Rivera
Broadway at last! The John Kander and Fred Ebb musical, originally conceived as a vehicle for Angela Lansbury, who withdrew
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“An American In Paris”: Gershwin At The Palace Theatre
No need to mince words here, this is one of the very best movie-musical-to-stage adaptations, a model, in fact, of
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