969 stories by "Michael Portantiere"
Original Broadway Cast, 1990 (RCA) One of the strongest works to date by lyricist Lynn Ahrens and composer Stephen Flaherty, Once on This Island is a juicy adaptation of the Rosa Guy novel M…
Original Broadway Cast, 1965 (RCA) This is a fabulous score. Alan Jay Lerner's lyrics are among his wittiest and most poetic, while Burton Lane's music is as melodic and moving as anything e…
Off-Broadway Cast, 1987 (That's Entertainment/JAY) During the opening number of this musical based on Amphitryon, as the three-man chorus sings "We are the chorus / Please don't ignore us," …
Original London Cast, 1960 (Decca/Deram) This musical adaptation of Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist was quite a phenomenon in its day, beginning as a modest, fringe-type production in London a…
Original Broadway Cast, 1943 (Decca) This thrilling cast album of Rodgers & Hammerstein's Oklahoma! score is the one, the only, the original that's credited with starting it all. The sho…
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 1988 (DRG) Here is one of the most disappointing cast albums ever made in that it utterly fails to capture the hilarity of this show. Oil City Symphony was a stra…
Original London Cast, 1963 (Decca/Must Close Saturday) A hit in London, a flop d'estime on Broadway, and the basis of a very odd film, Oh! What a Lovely War was a show that slotted vintage W…
Studio Cast, 1955 (Columbia/Sony) With a score by George and Ira Gershwin, and a book by Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse, this 1926 lark is a tuneful jaunt through the then-familiar territory…
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 1972 (Bell/no CD) After appearing in Noël Coward's last musical, The Girl Who Came to Supper, Roderick Cook compiled a revue of Coward's songs that was first p…
Original Broadway Cast, 1958 (Columbia/DRG) For their Broadway songwriting debut, the Hollywood team of Jay Livingston and Ray Evans freely adapted/the British film The Captain's Paradise an…
Original Broadway Cast, 1969 (Aidart/DRG) No stars; not recommended. Given that numerous scores by Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart, and Jerome Kern remain unrecorded, the existence of this alb…
Original Broadway Cast, 1981 (Original Cast) It may have been pure folly for Donald Driver and Michael Valenti to invite comparison to The Boys from Syracuse with this modern musical retelli…
Broadway Cast, 1952 (Capitol/DRG/Angel) Â The first musical to win a Pulitzer Prize, Of Thee I Sing (1931) is glorious. With music and lyrics by George and Ira Gershwin, and a book by Geo…
London Concert Cast, 1990 (EMI) Here is a rare find: a lost gem of a musical by Cole Porter that was produced in England but never on Broadway. This star-studded 1990 concert performance of …
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 1993 (DRG) Can anyone blame Iibrettist-composer-lyricist Dan Goggin for not wanting to mess with the formula that made Nunsense such a success? Of course not. Sti…
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 1986 (DRG) This album preserves much of the straightforward charm of the show on which author Dan Goggin would eventually build a worldwide franchise. The story o…
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 1968 (Columbia/DRG) With a book and lyrics by Gretchen Cryer and music by Nancy Ford, Now Is the Time for All Good Men is set in a small town in the Midwest. Its …
Off-Broadway Cast, 1997 (Varèse Sarabande) Douglas J. Cohen's chamber musical No Way to Treat a Lady received the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Richard Rodgers Award and two product…
Original Broadway Cast, 1962 (Capitol/DRG/Broadway Angel) Does this sound like a Richard Rodgers musical? A black American fashion model, living in Paris with a rich older lover in attendanc…
Broadway Cast, 1971 (Columbia/Sony) Pure heaven. This revisal of a nearly forgotten 1925 hit helped kick off the nostalgia craze on Broadway. Burt Shevelove did a good job of adapting Otto H…
Original Cast, 1941 (Pearl/AEI) Marc Blitzstein's follow-up to The Cradle Will Rock failed to coalesce and ran for only three performances " yet it earned a cast recording, with Blitzstein a…
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 1983 (Confidential Recording Company/no CD) This is a camp-fest, to say the least: a book musical with the feel of a revue, set in the demimonde of sophisticated …
Original Broadway Cast, 1982 (Columbia/Sony) The most original musical of its decade is both a dazzling exercise in style and a heartfelt tale of a middle-aged man's fear of maturity. Arthur…
Studio Cast, 1998 (Varèse Sarabande) Composer Claibe Richardson, best known for his remarkable score for The Grass Harp, worked unsuccessfully on a musical version of Sweeney Todd for sever…
Original Broadway Cast, 1991 (JAY) As conceived by librettist Arthur Laurents, the ambitious Nick and Nora wanted to be a gripping murder mystery, an X-ray of Hollywood hypocrisies, a femini…
