977 stories by "Michael Portantiere"
Studio Cast, 1966 (MGM/no CD) Long out of print, this recording was one of the first musical theater "concept albums." Few people seem to be aware that You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown began…
Original Broadway Cast, 1976 (ABC/no CD) Just as The Wiz was an all-black version of The Wizard of Oz, this show might be considered an all-black version of Jesus Christ Superstar. That's tr…
Pasadena Playhouse Cast, 2001 (Fynsworth Alley/Ghostlight) This 1938 flop is a musical adaptation, with songs by Cole Porter and a book by Rowland Leigh, of Siegfried Geyer's By Candlelight,…
Original Cast, 2002 (PS Classics) Although A Year With Frog and Toad played only a short time on Broadway in 2003, previous runs at the Children's Theatre Company of Minneapolis (where the s…
Original Broadway Cast, 1978 (Columbia/Masterworks Broadway) Studs Terkel's Working, the 1972 best-selling volume of interviews with Americans discussing the pros and cons of their occupatio…
Original Broadway Cast, 1953 (Decca/MCA) Nine years after their breakthrough show, On the Town, composer Leonard Bernstein and lyricists Betty Comden and Adolph Green were hired on very shor…
Original Broadway Cast, 1965 (Columbia) This was an odd little show, billed as "a play with music." Columbia probably decided to record The Zulu and the Zayda because the songs were written …
Original Broadway Cast, 1968 (Capitol) Are you sitting down? When I saw Zorba in its original Broadway production (not the horrible Anthony Quinn revival; see below), I thought it a better s…
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 1996 (First Night) The talented team of librettist-lyricist John Dempsey and composer Dana P. Rowe mined the familiar terrain of Little Shop/Rocky Horror teen-nos…
Encores! Concert Cast, 1999 (Decca) You can always tell an overture arranged and orchestrated by Hans Spialek: The brass section announces something important, the woodwinds flutter and swoo…
Original Cast, 1919-20 (Smithsonian/no CD) By the time of its 13th edition, Ziegfeld's legendary beauty-and-music revue was a Broadway institution. Some historians hold that this 1919 versio…
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 2003 (PS Classics) Like the show itself, the cast recording of composer-lyricist Tim Acito's "musical fairy tale" Zanna, Don't! will probably appeal mainly to tee…
Original Broadway Cast, 1981 (Arista/Masterworks Broadway) This is a musicalized update of the famous Hepburn-Tracy movie of the same title, with the plot changed so that it now concerns a t…
Film Soundtrack, 1939 (MGM/Rhino-Turner) Is it an overstatement to call MGM's The Wizard of Oz the world's most beloved film? Happily, a superb job has been done with the latest edition of t…
Studio Recordings, Piano Rolls, Music-Box Discs, 1903-08 (Hungry Tiger Press, 2CDs) Shortly after L. Frank Baum published The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, a stage musical version became the bigge…
Original Broadway Cast, 1975 (Atlantic) L. Frank Baum hit theatrical pay dirt with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Two years after the novel's publication in 1900, Baum and partners launched a m…
Original Broadway Cast, 1952 (RCA) Eddie Fisher's mega-hit recording of the title tune helped turn this Catskills summer romance, based on Arthur Kober's play Having Wonderful Time, from an …
Original Cast Members, 1995 (RCA) Composer Jeffrey Lunden and lyricist-librettist Arthur Perlman deserve credit for tackling such difficult source material: Arthur Kopit's acclaimed play Win…
Original London Cast, 1982 (EMI/Ange1) Much of Tony Macaulay's music is too pop-rocky for an adaptation of the classic 1920s Ben Hecht-Charles MacArthur comedy The Front Page, but Macaulay a…
Original Broadway Cast, 1991 (Sony) Chameleonic composer Cy Coleman and stalwart Broadway lyricists Betty Comden and Adolph Green wrote the songs for The Will Rogers Follies, a fanciful musi…
Original Broadway Cast, 1955 (RCA) Cole Porter's last Broadway show is a charming and sophisticated musical based on the Greta Garbo film Ninotcka. Only Porter could have given that heady ci…
Original Broadway Cast, 1997 (Sony) Based on the lives of Daisy and Violet Hilton, twins who were born joined at the hip and who had minor show business careers that exploited their oddity, …
Original London/Broadway Cast, 1976 (RCA) When Side by Side by Sondheim opened in London, it was warmly received, as half of Sondheim's shows had not yet been seen in the West End. In New Yo…
Original Broadway Cast, 1961 (Roulette/no CD) Carol Channing spent many years between Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Hello, Dolly! touring in a successful nightclub act that was gussied up for…
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 2000 (RCA) This was the first of the entries in the 2000 competition between two stage musical adaptations of Joseph Moncure March's epic poem. Although Andrew Li…
