973 stories by "Michael Portantiere"
Original Broadway Cast, 1971 (Columbia/Sony) Â This show flopped on Broadway, but the cast recording is too much fun to pass up. Scored by composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb, 70, …
Original Broadway Cast, 1955 (Decca) Seventh Heaven received mixed-to-negative reviews and closed fairly quickly, but the show's impressive music earned it this recording. Composer Victor Yo…
Original Broadway Cast, 1969 (Columbia/Sony) History teacher-turned-songwriter Sherman Edwards got the idea for a musical about the writing and adoption of the Declaration of Independence, a…
Original Broadway Cast, 1951 (RCA/Masterworks Broadway) "Willie, get a wiggle on!" That characteristic, gee-whiz, chorus-boy exhortation, in a song called "Weatherbee's Drug Store," opens th…
Original Broadway Cast, 2000 (Decca) Whatever was wrong with producers Barry and Fran Weissler's attempts to cobble a musical out of bits and pieces of Dr. Seuss' cherished children's books,…
Original Broadway Cast, 1973 (Buddah/DRG) "Up, down; up, down" goes a lyric in the title tune, and that's a good barometer for this Cy Coleman-Dorothy Fields musical based on the William Gib…
Off-Broadway Cast, 1999 (RCA) Many composers and lyricists turned out a mixed bag of songs and sketches for Secrets Every Smart Traveler Should Know, an occasionally clever revue. Nearly all…
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 1964 (Columbia/Sony) Based on a popular short story by James Thurber that had already inspired a film starring Danny Kaye, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty " adapt…
Original Broadway Cast, 1991 (Columbia) The Lucy Simon-Marsha Norman musicalization of the beloved Frances Hodgson Burnett novel The Secret Garden worked its charm on Broadway for more than …
Concept Recording, 1991 (Broadway Angel) Here's a "concept album" for a musical that probably wasn't a very good idea to begin with " at least, not as composed by Frank Wildhorn, whose show …
Original Broadway Cast, 1958 (RCA/DRG) First, novelist Richard Bissell wrote 7½ Cents, which was turned into the hit musical The Pajama Game. Then he wrote a novella about his experiences…
Film Soundtrack, 1977 (Polydor) Iconic though this movie may be, the blockbuster soundtrack album of Saturday Night Fever is distressingly dated. Even if individual songs are terrific, how m…
Original London Cast, 1998 (First Night) With music and lyrics by a 24-year-old Stephen Sondheim and a book by Julius J. Epstein, Saturday Night was supposed to be produced on Broadway in th…
Original Broadway Cast, 1959 (RCA) Edna Ferber's Saratoga Trunk had already been adapted as a hit film, so the stage musical version, developed for Broadway as Saratoga and rumored to be the…
Original Cast, 1988 (RCA) Conceived and directed by Mbongeni Ngema, Sarafina! is the "little musical that could." Despite considerable financial hardship in moving the show to production, it…
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 1969 (Capitol/Angel) Unlike some other rock musicals of the period, Salvation had no dance or spectacle elements; the physical production was tacky, and the show …
Original Broadway Cast, 1946 (Capitol/Angel) Careening between musical comedy and musical tragedy, St. Louis Woman is a turn-of-the-century tale with an all-black cast and a score by Harold …
Original Broadway Cast, 1961 (Capitol/Angel) Which musical has the best opening and closing numbers for its star? A good bet is Noël Coward's Sail Away. The show-stopping songs, written e…
Los Angeles Cast, 1993 (Varèse Sarabande) Ruthless! is a very campy show, first produced Off-Broadway in 1992 and then in Los Angeles the following year, about a talented little girl named …
Original Broadway Cast, 1978 (Columbia/DRG) Elizabeth Swados's revue about street kids, developed by The Public Theater before opening on Broadway, was considered fresh and edgy when it debu…
Original Broadway Cast, 1965 (Warner Bros./no CD) One of the oddest musicals ever to hit Broadway, Rugantino first opened in Rome and became an enormous hit. On a visit to Italy, American pr…
Original Broadway Cast, 1970 (Columbia/Sony) Composer Jerry Bock and lyricist Sheldon Harnick were still at the peak of their productivity, following their great success with Fiddler on the …
Original Broadway Cast, 1988 (MCA Classics) Romance Romance is intelligent and well crafted, but the score is not one you'll necessarily be eager to hear more than once. The show consists of…
Original London Cast, 1973 (First Night) The first recording of Richard O'Brien's kinky cult classic is weak. The cast members include O'Brien himself, Patricia Quinn, Little Nell, Jonathan …
Studio Cast, 1944 (Decca) Roberta has one of the best-remembered musical theater scores of the 1930s, and it owes its fame solely to the efforts of Jerome Kern, whose rapturous music managed…
