Enchanted Evenings:The Broadway Musical from 'Show Boat' to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber (121 page)

23
. Aside from Julie’s complementary stanza discussed in the previous note, the only major changes between Rodgers’s holograph and the published vocal score are those of key and the absence of dotted rhythms in the D-major sketch. Not only does Rodgers place “If I Loved You” in C major in the holograph, he also places the first page of “Scene Billy and Julie” in F
major and G major instead of G major and A
major, 33; he also assigns the “mill theme” (Example 9.1) to D major in both of its appearances rather than G major and E
major as in the published score, 38–39 and 47–48, respectively.

24
. The idea of retaining an accompaniment figure for the sake of musical unity rather than for a demonstrable dramatic purpose was earlier evident in
On Your Toes
(“There’s a Small Hotel” and the principal tune of “Slaughter on 10th Avenue”).

25
. When in act II Carrie imitates one of the “hussies with nothin’ on their legs but tights” that she saw in New York, her music also clearly echoes the music associated with Julie’s name (“You’re a queer one, Julie Jordan”) that Carrie introduced early in act I (“I’m a Tomboy, jest a Tomboy”). Appropriately, the stage directions indicate that “Mr. Snow enters with Snow Jr. and interrupts song.”

26
. Howard Kissel, “
Carousel
Is Music to Our Tears,”
Daily News
, March 28, 1994; reprinted in
New York Theatre Critics’ Reviews
, vol. 55, 6.

27
. Frank Scheck, “Sharp New Staging Gives a Lift to Rodgers and Hammerstein,”
Christian Science Monitor
, March 25, 1994; reprinted in
New York Theatre Critics’ Reviews
, vol. 55, 72.

28
. This quotation was Boswell’s adaptation of the medieval dictum, also appropriate in this context, “to cite heresy is not to be a heretic.” John Boswell,
Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), xvii.

29
. Edwin Wilson, “The Music Makes It Soar,”
Wall Street Journal
, March 28, 1994; reprinted in
New York Theatre Critics’ Reviews
, vol. 55, 76.

30
. Rodgers,
Musical Stages
, 156.

31
. Ibid., 236.

32
. Joseph P. Swain discusses how augmented triads and modality also serve to establish an individual character and identity for
Carousel
. See Swain,
The Broadway Musical
, 99–127. An especially poignant use of the augmented triad (F-A
-D
) occurs on the fourth measure of “If I Loved You” (Example 9.5a) where it follows a simple but extremely effective harmonic progression in measures 1–3, a musical embodiment of the joys and soft terrors of a hypothetical romance: a D
-major triad on measure 1, a D
–diminished seventh on measure 2 that never fails to surprise and delight, and a D
-major triad in first inversion (F in the bass) on measure 3 that gently prepares for the augmented triad on F in measure 4.

33
.
I Remember Mama
was based on the first play that Rodgers and Hammerstein produced on Broadway, John Van Druten’s hit play of the same title, which opened its long run of
714 performances in 1944. In 1967 Rodgers wrote eight songs for a televised adaptation of Shaw’s
Androcles and the Lion
that featured Norman Wisdom as Androcles, Geoffrey Holder as the Lion, and Noël Coward as Caesar. For more on Rodgers’s final musicals see Geoffrey Block,
Richard Rodgers
, 202–55.

34
. Perhaps the least known of their adaptations,
Pipe Dream
(1955), based on John Steinbeck’s
Sweet Thursday
, ended up as their major disappointment; despite an enthusiastic review from Brooks Atkinson in the
New York Times
, it ran only 246 performances, less than either
Allegro
(315) or
Me and Juliet
(358). Their final musicals, both adaptations, produced one modest success,
Flower Drum Song
in 1958 (600 performances), and their fifth major hit,
The Sound of Music
in 1959, at 1,443 performances the second longest running musical of the 1950s (after
My Fair Lady
) and the fourth longest running show before 1960. In addition to these stage shows Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote
Cinderella
, a ninety-minute musical for television starring Julie Andrews broadcast on March 31, 1957; during Rodgers’s lifetime a remake starring Lesley Ann Warren was broadcast on February 22, 1965, and a third televised remake starring Brandy Norwood followed on November 2, 1997.

Chapter 10:
Kiss Me, Kate

1
. According to Steven Suskin’s “Broadway Scorecard,”
Kiss Me, Kate
received eight “raves” and one “favorable” review and no reviews in the lower categories (“mixed,” “unfavorable,” and “pan”). See Suskin,
Opening Night on Broadway
, 367. Of the musicals surveyed in this book only
Guys and Dolls
and
My Fair Lady
would receive no reviews lower than a “rave.”

2
. Stanley Green,
The World of Musical Comedy
, 156. The first sentence of the Porter quotation appears in Richard G. Hubler,
The Cole Porter Story
, 90; in the annotated Hubler interview Porter goes on to say without further explanation that Rodgers and Hammerstein “are, let us say, more musicianly.”

3
. The only known commodity in the
Kiss Me, Kate
cast was Alfred Drake (Fred Graham/ Petruchio), who had earlier achieved stardom as the original Curley in
Oklahoma!

4
. George Eells,
The Life That Late He Led
, 279.

5
. The Porter Collection also contains sketch material, the May libretto, and copies of the discarded songs.

6
.
Kiss Me, Kate
, “Unfinished Lyrics” (“Bianca”), in the Cole Porter Collection, Music Division, Library of Congress. See also Stephen Citron,
Noel and Cole
, 218.