Enchanted Evenings:The Broadway Musical from 'Show Boat' to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber

by Block, Geoffrey

  3. John McClain, “Music Magnificent in Overwhelming Hit,” New York Journal-American, September 27, 1957; quoted in Steven Suskin, Opening Night on Broadway, 696; reprinted in New York Theatre Critics’ Reviews, vol. 18, 254.

  4. Walter Kerr, “‘West Side Story,’” New York Herald Tribune, September 27, 1957; quoted in Suskin, Opening Night on Broadway, 695–96 (quotations on 696); reprinted in New York Theatre Critics’ Reviews, vol. 18, 253.

  5. Brooks Atkinson, “Theatre: The Jungles of the City,” New York Times, September 27, 1957, 14; quoted in Suskin, Opening Night on Broadway, 695; reprinted in New York Theatre Critics’ Reviews, vol. 18, 253.

  6. Robert Coleman, “‘West Side Story’ A Sensational Hit!,” Daily Mirror, September 27, 1957. New York Theatre Critics’ Reviews, vol. 18, 254. John McClain, “Music Magnificent in Overwhelming Hit,” and John Chapman, “‘West Side Story’: A Splendid and Super-modern Musical Drama,” Daily News, September 27, 1957; reprinted in New York Theatre Critics’ Reviews, vol. 18, 252; the McClain and Chapman reviews are excerpted in Suskin, Opening Night on Broadway, 695–96.

  7. Quotation in Stephen Banfield, Sondheim’s Broadway Musicals, 39. Not until 1988 would a movie (The Last Emperor) capture as many Academy Awards (see chapter 14 for specific details).

  8. Bernstein’s log was reprinted in Findings, 144–47, and in 1985 with the jacket notes to Bernstein’s recording, Deutsche Grammophon 4125253–1/4. References to this log will be keyed to the pagination in Findings.

  9. Otis L. Guernsey Jr., ed., Broadway Song & Story, 40–54.

  10. Craig Zadan, Sondheim & Co., 11–31.

  11. Humphrey Burton, Leonard Bernstein, 265–77; Sondheim, “An Anecdote,” xi–xii; and Mel Gussow, “‘West Side Story’: The Beginning of Something Great.” Stephen Banfield discusses the genesis of West Side Story in Sondheim’s Broadway Musicals, 31–38.

  12. The manuscript evidence suggests that the discrepancies among the recollections are greatly exaggerated in Joan Peyser’s relentlessly negative Bernstein biography, in which she accuses the collaborators of deliberate lying. See Peyser, Leonard Bernstein, 255–77.

  13. The eight libretto drafts are dated as follows: (1) January 1956; (2) Spring 1956; (3) March 15, 1956; (4) Winter 1956; (5) April 14, 1957; (6) May 1, 1957; (7) June 1, 1957; and (8) July 19, 1957. I am grateful to Harold L. Miller and the State Historical Society of Wisconsin for making these and other West Side Story materials available to me.

  14. All 1949 entries appear in Bernstein, Findings, 147.

  15. All 1955 entries appear in Bernstein, Findings, 147–48.

  16. Guernsey, ed., Broadway Song & Story, 41.

  17. Candide would open the first of its disappointing seventy-three performances on December 1, 1956.

  18. Bernstein, Findings, 148.

  19. Bernstein’s 1957 entries are located in Bernstein, Findings, 146–47.

  20. “Mambo” was reprised on the drugstore juke box late in act II when the Jets are taunting Anita (Taunting Scene). Gussow, “‘West Side Story’: The Beginning of Something Great.”

  21. Ibid.

  22. Peyser, Leonard Bernstein, 267 and note 20.

  23. Gussow, “‘West Side Story’: The Beginning of Something Great.”

  24. Ibid. The undeniable organicism of the work and Bernstein’s awareness of musical technique makes one skeptical of the composer’s remark that he “didn’t do all this on purpose.”

  25. Peyser, Leonard Bernstein, 267.

  26. Another possible melodic source for the opening of “Somewhere” is a prominent lyrical theme in Richard Strauss’s youthful Burleske for piano and orchestra (1885–1886). See chapter 12, note 46.

  27. Peyser, Leonard Bernstein, 261. Despite its borrowed origins, Bernstein remembered that it “took longer to write that song [“Maria”] than any other” because “it’s difficult to make a strong love song and avoid corn.” See Zadan, Sondheim & Co., 21.

  The principal certain or possible borrowings are derived from Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet (and perhaps Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto), Blitzstein’s Regina (previously discussed and illustrated with Bernstein’s transformations in Examples 13.1 and 13.2), the Shofar call or Berg’s Piano Sonata, op. 1 (the latter shown in Example 13.9), and Wagner’s “redemption” motive from Die Walküre (Example 13.8). Other possibilities include the following: “America” (Ravel’s “Chansons romanesque” from Don Quichotte [1933] and Copland’s El Salón México [1936], the latter a work which Bernstein had arranged for solo piano in 1941); “Tonight” (Quintet) (Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, third movement [1930]); and “I Feel Pretty” (Ravel’s Rhapsodie Espagnole [1908]). The Stravinsky reference appears in Stempel, “Broadway’s Mozartean Moment,” 48. For another possible Beethoven borrowing, see note 73.

  Gradenwitz overstates the musical resemblance between the opening measure of the Balcony Scene and the first four notes of Britten’s “Goodnight Theme” from act I of The Rape of Lucretia, the recently published score of which Bernstein noticed in Gradenwitz’s “modest private apartment.” Peyser fixes a date (1946) to this occasion and adds that Bernstein was then attending rehearsals of the work prior to its premiere. Her statement that “‘Tonight’ was derived from Benjamin Britten” similarly places far too great a burden on this four-note descending scale. See Peter Gradenwitz, Leonard Bernstein, 193 and Peyser, Leonard Bernstein, 365–66.

  28. The libretto drafts of January and Spring 1956 describe the bridal shop song as “light and gay,” a description that fits “Oh, Happy We” but not “One Hand, One Heart,” which until the Washington tryouts in August 1957 “had only a dotted half note to each bar.” Zadan, Sondheim & Co., 23 (see also note 35).

  29. According to Burton, “Where Does It Get You in the End?” was “annexed from the Venice scene in Candide.” Humphrey Burton, Leonard Bernstein, 269.

  30. Other material would be altered or discarded in 1957. Instead of a Dream Ballet, the librettos before April 14 indicated a scene in a police station where the death of Bernardo and Riff, unknown to the Sharks and the Jets, would be announced. In the police station Tony and Maria would reenact their meeting at the dance and decide to elope, and Chino would utter the immortal words, “Life, liberty … and the pursuit of crappiness.” In the drugstore scene before the climax of the drama in the final 1956 version, Maria rather than Anita was taunted by the Jets. Not until the final months before rehearsals began did the creators of West Side Story succeed in finding a substitute for the philter.

  31. Guernsey, ed., Broadway Song & Story, 44. The first two libretto drafts (January and Spring 1956) contained one song in an opening scene, the “Rumble Song.” Judging from an earlier musical draft of the actual Rumble, the “Rumble Song” of early 1956 and the song “Mix” were probably one and the same, but since no lyrics are given in the libretto, this conclusion cannot be established with certainty. In any event, by the third libretto draft (March 15), the concluding song of the scene is in fact labeled “Mix” (in the fourth libretto draft, however, “Mix” is not indicated). The early libretto drafts also suggest that two songs, “Up to the Moon” and “My Greatest Day,” based on the eventual Prologue and “Jet Song,” respectively, preceded “Mix.”

  32. Bernstein would reuse a melody from “Mix,” also discarded from the Prologue, in the Blues portion of “Dance at the Gym.” A version of this idea (with some different lyrics) was retained in the published vocal score, 20–21, as part of the “Jet Song,” and accompanied by a note that this material was cut in the New York production.

  33. Laurents’s fifth and sixth libretto drafts still indicate only one song in the Prologue, “Mix”; the seventh and eighth drafts (June 1 and July 19) contain a song for the Jets called “We’re the Greatest” and a reference in the dialogue to another ephemeral song, “This Turf Is Ours.” Shortly before rehearsals “Mix” was finally dropped. Although it is more difficult to date the “new” Rumble, the rehearsal period certainly mar
ks a terminal date for the replacement of a Rumble (based on “Mix”) with the present version. Bernstein recalls in his interview with Gussow that “Mix” “wound up in ‘The Chichester Psalms’ in Hebrew.” See Gussow, “‘West Side Story’: The Beginning of Something Great” and Chichester Psalms II (Amberson/Boosey & Hawkes), 38–50.

  34. Guernsey, ed., Broadway Song & Story, 45. Sondheim also confirms the reference to “This Turf Is Ours” in an interview reported in Zadan, Sondheim & Co., 24: “Then we wrote a new opening because everyone felt the opening wasn’t violent enough. The new opening was really violent and everyone thought it was too violent, so we went back to the ‘Jet Song.’” Like “Mix,” “This Turf Is Ours” resurfaced in another Bernstein work when it was incorporated in the Fanfare for the Inauguration of John F. Kennedy (January 19, 1961). Its opening motive is nearly identical to the “hate” motive (see Example 13.9a).

  35. Zadan, Sondheim & Co., 23–24. Sondheim also has more to say about the aptly titled “One”: “I remember that the tune of ‘One Hand, One Heart,’ which Bernstein originally wrote for Candide, had only a dotted half note to each bar. I realized I couldn’t set any two-syllable words to the song, it had to be all one-syllable words. I was stifled, and down in Washington, after my endless pleas, Lenny put in two little quarter notes so that I could put ‘make of our’ as in ‘Make of our hearts one heart.’ Not a great deal, but at least a little better.” Ibid., 23.

  36. The piano-vocal manuscript of “One Hand, One Heart” also reveals that some of its orchestral material was sung, and more significantly, that the instrumental foreshadowing of “Somewhere” introducing the song was not a late addition.

  37. Zadan, Sondheim & Co., 24. “Kids Ain’t” is included among Bernstein’s vocal manuscripts.

  38. Guernsey, ed., Broadway Song & Story, 49.

  39. Ibid., 49–50.

  40. In a letter dated “8 Aug already!” Bernstein writes to his wife, Felicia, that he had written “a new song for Tony” the day before. Burton, Leonard Bernstein, 272.

  41. Zadan, Sondheim & Co., 21. Sondheim confirms that “Something’s Coming” was indeed completed in a day. See Sondheim, “An Anecdote,” xi–xii.

  42. The locale of this scene changed several times. In the first two librettos “Tonio” appears in the opening scene with the Jets. In the two following libretto drafts, the scene takes place at the drugstore fountain; in the librettos of April 14 and May 1 the locale is the corner of a playground. The final draft moves from Tony’s bedroom (June 1) to an unspecified yard in (July 19).

  43. The final libretto of July 19 concludes with a variation on the first words of the song, “Who knows? Could be. Why not?!” See also Guernsey, ed., Broadway Song & Story, 43, and Zadan, Sondheim & Co., 21.

  44. Bernstein describes his intentions further in his “8 Aug. already!” letter to Felicia: “It’s really going to save his character—a driving 2/4 in the great tradition (but of course fucked up by me with 3/4s and whatnot)—but it gives Tony balls—so that he doesn’t emerge as just a euphoric dreamer.” Burton, Leonard Bernstein, 272.

  45. The antecedents of the Romeo and Juliet legend go back at least as far as the Greek myth of Pyramus and Thisbe, who, like their Shakespearean counterparts, are forbidden from marrying by their parents, and who, mistakenly thinking the other dead, needlessly take their own lives. Variations on a related theme frequented Renaissance Italy and were adapted by French and English writers for more than a hundred years before Shakespeare drafted his play. Geoffrey Bullough and Kenneth Muir have surveyed these and other sources of this tale of woe, and it is now unquestioned that Shakespeare borrowed heavily from Arthur Brooke’s once popular poem, “The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet” (1562), itself based on the Italian Le Novelle del Bandello (1554), adapted into French by Pierre Boisteau (1559) and translated into English by William Painter (1567). Muir demonstrates Shakespeare’s fidelity to Brooke’s poem, including unmistakable “verbal echoes,” and notes “three occasions” where “the phrasing of the poem is repeated almost word for word.”

  In performing his alchemy Shakespeare condensed the time frame of Brooke’s leisurely romance (3,020 lines) from more than nine months to less than one week. Brooke even allows his Romeus and Juliet a month or two of marital bliss before the fatal duel in which Romeus, in self-defense, kills Tybalt. Muir argues that this striking increase in “speed and intensity … shows the passionate impulsiveness of the two lovers, and [that] it makes them consummate their marriage in the knowledge that they must separate on the morrow.” Geoffrey Bullough, ed., Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, vol. I, Early Comedies, Poems, Romeo and Juliet (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973), 269–83; Kenneth Muir, Shakespeare’s Sources, vol. I, Comedies and Tragedies (London: Methuen, 1957), 21–30 (quotation on 24).

  46. Despite the vocal resources on hand, Berlioz in his “dramatic symphony” (1838–1839) uses the orchestra exclusively to portray the central dramatic events, the Balcony Scene and the Death of Romeo and Juliet. Tchaikovsky’s Fantasy-Overture (1869, revised in 1870 and 1880) contains no vocal parts at all.

  47. Harlow Robinson, Sergei Prokofiev: A Biography (New York: Viking, 1987), 302.

  48. Most of Zeffirelli’s distortions can be attributed to his predilection to replace Shakespeare’s dialogue with visual images, often with musical accompaniment. Act V exemplifies this approach. In scene 1 he replaces Romeo’s soliloquy (a description of a dream that lasts approximately thirty seconds) with the visual image of Balthasar passing Friar John on the road to Mantua. Gone also from scene 1 is Romeo’s poignant meeting with the Apothecary. Together these deletions reduce Shakespeare’s eighty-five lines to a mere six. Gone entirely is the twenty-nine-line second scene between Friar Laurence and Friar John.

  In scene 3 Zeffirelli omits Paris and his duel with Romeo in front of Juliet’s tomb, the dialogue between the watchmen, most of Prince Escalus’s lines, and Friar Laurence’s explanation of the tragic events. Capulet, Lady Capulet, and Montague are seen but not heard. Thus, out of 310 lines Zeffirelli preserves only 160. The time he saves on Shakespeare’s “extraneous” dialogue allows movie audiences to hear additional uninterrupted repetitions of Nino Rota’s “Love Song from Romeo and Juliet.” Ironically, when all is said and sung, the nineteen minutes of Zeffirelli’s act V occupy nearly as much total time as the marginally abbreviated British Broadcasting Corporation version (twenty-two minutes).

  49. Guernsey, ed., Broadway Song & Story, 47.

  50. Some of the parallels between Shakespeare’s play and its musical adaptation described in the following paragraphs were derived from Norris Houghton, “Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story.”

  51. A rare “sugar coating” in the film version occurs when Doc’s drugstore is metamorphosed into a candy store.

  52. Isaac Asimov cites numerous textual details to support his assertion that the feud had lost most of its steam before the outset of the play. Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare (New York: Avenel Books, 1978), vol. 1, 474–98.

  53. Guernsey, ed., Broadway Song & Story, 47.

  54. West Side Story libretto drafts Nos. 1 and 2, 2–5–9.

  55. West Side Story libretto draft No. 3, 2–5–23.

  56. Guernsey, ed., Broadway Song & Story, 43.

  57. Ibid., 44. Bernstein told Burton in an interview that he “tried giving all the material to the orchestra and having her [Maria] sing an obbligato throughout” and “a version that sounded just like a Puccini aria, which we really did not need.” Even after numerous attempts, he “never got past six bars with it.” Burton, Leonard Bernstein, 275.

  58. Original cast, Columbia S 32603; studio cast, Deutsche Grammophon 415253–1/4.

  59. In a letter to Felicia, dated July 23, 1957, Bernstein writes that “all the aspects of the score I like best—the big, poetic parts—get criticized as ‘operatic’—and there’s a concerted move to chuck them.” Burton, Leonard Bernstein, 271.