969 stories by "Michael Portantiere"
Original Broadway Cast, 1949 (Columbia/Sony) This is a buoyant performance of a delightful score by Jule Styne (music) and Leo Robin (lyrics), based on the popular 1920s novel and play of th…
Original Broadway Cast, 1961 (Capitol/Angel) After the film Gigi, nobody was interested in another musical tale of a virgin and a rake in beIle epoque Europe, but Fay and Michael Kanin went …
Original Broadway Cast, 1962 (Capitol/Angel) Â Except for the "House of Marcus Lycus" sequence and the courtesans' dances, every important piece of music in this playful, skillful Stephen…
New York and London Casts, 1927 and 1928 (Columbia, etc./Hallmark) Purists who require the Gershwins' Funny Face untainted by songs written by others have no choice but to brave these primit…
Original Broadway Cast, 2000 (BMG) A great pleasure of experiencing this show live was seeing how well Terrence McNally's script melded with show-tune novice David Yazbek's music and lyrics.…
Studio Cast, 2001 (Nonesuch) Based on a play by Aristophanes, The Frogs was written by Stephen Sondheim and Burt Shevelove to be performed by the Yale Repertory Theatre in the university's s…
Off-Broadway Cast, 2002 (Original Cast Records) Here was a wonderful idea for a musical: Bert Lahr in an adaptation of Volpone, with the action of that Ben Jonson classic moved to gold-rush …
Original Broadway Cast, 1999 (RCA) Bob Fosse captured the revolutionary sexual politics of the 1960s and 1970s in a voluptuous mix of dance forms based on jazz, tap, and ballet. The show tha…
Original Broadway Cast, 1980 (RCA) This wasn't the first Hollywood musical to be adapted to the stage, but its success established a trend that has reached well into the 21st century. Whethe…
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 1990 (RCA) In its New York incarnation, Steve Ross's "Heavenly Musical Hit" Forever Plaid was, if you'll pardon the expression, a divine tribute to the close-…
Film Soundtrack, 1984 (Columbia/Legacy) Directed by Herbert Ross, with a screenplay by Dean Pitchford, Footloose is about some small-town teenagers who attack a municipal ordinance and do ba…
The Musicals Tonight! production of the delicious 1933 musical Pardon My English, with a score by George and Ira Gershwin and a book by Herbert Fields and Morrie Ryskind, opens tonight. Dire…
Original Broadway Cast, 1971 (Capitol/Angel/Kritzerland) To many, Follies is one of the greatest of all shows, possibly the ultimate musical theater piece. Others find it cultishly "interest…
Columbia University Cast, 1980 (Original Cast Records) It's like dredging up riches from the Titanic: An unknown Rodgers and Hart score, their Columbia University varsity show from 1920, del…
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 1962 (Mercury/no CD) The cast album of this virtually forgotten musical is especially notable for two of its principal cast members: Avon Long, whose lengthy and …
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 1996 (Nonesuch) In telling this bleak, based-in-truth story of a Kentucky man trapped in a cave and the media circus that surrounds him and his family during the …
Original London Cast, 1980 (Original Cast Records) The musical Flowers for Algernon " or, as it was actually titled onstage, Charlie and Algernon " is based on the Daniel Keyes novel about a…
Original Broadway Cast, 1958 (Columbia/Sony) Although Flower Drum Song doesn't have the substance of most of Rodgers and Hammerstein's other shows, it features one of the team's most enjoyab…
Original London Cast, 1900-15 (various labels/Opal) The blurb on the CD cover calls this "the world's first-ever original cast album!" Well, the cast of the 1899 success did enter the Gramop…
Original Broadway Cast, 1965 (RCA) John Kander and Fred Ebb's first show together tells the story of Flora Meszaros (Liza Minnelli), who is thrilled to get a garment-district job during the …
Original Broadway Cast, 1951 (Capitol/DRG) With a title such as this, could you possibly expect something ordinary? Flahooley was the brainchild of E. Y. Harburg, who wanted to satirize big …
Original London Cast, 1997 (First Night/Relativity) An American political satire starring a Scotsman and an Australian, The Fix was a succes d'estime in a Sam Mendes-directed production at t…
Original London Cast, 1991 (First Night) Super-producer Cameron Mackintosh found this little revue of Louis Jordan songs at the Theatre Royal Stratford in London's East End and liked it so m…
Original Los Angeles Cast, 2002 (PS Classics) Although Michael John LaChiusa's First Lady Suite premiered Off-Broadway in 1993, the piece wasn't recorded until it was staged in Los Angeles n…
Original London Cast, 1996 (First Night) A curious musical with a curious history: It opened in New Jersey to respectable reviews, traveled to London for a sort of protracted New York tryout…
