977 stories by "Michael Portantiere"
Original Broadway Cast, 1981 (Original Cast Records) Although the subject was ripe and the characters were fascinating, Onward Victoria was a one-performance disaster that nonetheless yielde…
Original Broadway Cast, 1978 (Columbia/Sony) Based on the stage farce Twentieth Century, best known as a Hollywood film starring John Barrymore and Carole Lombard, this 1930s spoof might hav…
Original Broadway Cast Members, 1944 (Decca/MCA) Record companies treated Broadway musicals pretty poorly until the concept of the original cast album became firmly entrenched, so this colle…
Original Broadway Cast, 1943 (Decca) This incomplete recording of composer Kurt Weill's One Touch of Venus paints a very deceptive picture of the score. While there are 17 songs in the score…
Original Broadway Cast, 1980 (Original Cast Records) From overture to finale, One Night Stand is as dynamic a score as Jule Styne ever wrote. But Herb Gardner proved to be inept as a librett…
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 1980 (Warner Bros./no CD) Beginning in the late 1970s, the theater turned a nostalgic and admiring eye on the black musicals of earlier years " the imperishable s…
Original Broadway Cast, 1963 (RCA) 110 in the Shade is the Harvey Schmidt-Tom Jones musical based on N. Richard Nash's The Rainmaker. As heard on this recording, the songs are replete with s…
Original Broadway Cast, 1959 (Kapp/MCA) The fairy tale source material is "The Princess and the Pea," given a satirical fleshing-out. But Once Upon a Mattress was really a Cinderella show. I…
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 …
