977 stories by "Michael Portantiere"
Original Broadway Cast, 1963 (Columbia/Sony) This Cinderella story is set during the coronation of George V, adapted by Harry Kurnitz (book) and Noël Coward (music and lyrics) from Terenc…
Original Broadway Cast, 1954 (ColumbialDRG) Sigmund Romberg worked as a staff writer for the Shuberts, churning out 22 scores from 1914 through 1918 alone! Following his indentured servitude…
Original U.K. Cast, 1987 (TER/no CD) One of five Rodgers and Hart shows to open in 1926, The Girl Friend had a healthy run. In 1937, the show hit London, where two British writers, R. P. Wes…
Film Soundtrack, 1943 (Rhino-Turner) It's widely known that George and Ira Gershwin's Girl Crazy has a terrific score, and that Ethel Merman made her legendary Broadway debut in the show sin…
Film Soundtrack, 1958 (MGM/Rhino) This beloved Alan Jay Lerner-Frederick Loewe score is tremendously appealing, and the soundtrack album is one of the all-time great recordings of any screen…
Original Broadway Cast, 1968 (Columbia/Sony) This is a brassy, heart-pounding, and ear-pounding show based on the life and songs of the great showman George M. Cohan. The title role is playe…
Zorba! may be the greatest Kander and Ebb musical you've never seen. A story of life and death in the Greek isles, originally produced and directed by Harold Prince, the show was well regard…
Zorba! may be the greatest Kander and Ebb musical you've never seen. A story of life and death in the Greek isles, originally produced and directed by Harold Prince, the show was well regard…
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…
