484 stories from Masterworks Broadway
By Peter Filichia --
What musical gave its leading character the best opening song as well as the best closing song? For men, the answer is probably My Fair Lady, as Rex Harrison got to si…
By Peter Filichia --
Forty-seven years ago this week, musical theater enthusiasts added a new word to their foreign-language vocabulary.
They'd already learned "L'chaim!" from Fiddler on…
By Peter Filichia --
The birth of any innovation makes for some growing pains. That too was the case with the so-called long-playing record when it came into existence in the late '40s.
…
By Peter Filichia "
It was to be The Big Show of the season. For decades, "The New Richard Rodgers musical" always was. But Two by Two was going to be The REALLY BIG Show of 1970-1971 becau…
There's that old expression, "You don't have to be Jewish to" " whatever. Well, I'll say that on this November 1, you don't have to be Catholic to celebrate All Saints Day. …
We all have our favorite recordings. Mine, of course, may not be the same as yours. But of all the studio cast recordings that Lehman Engel made in the early '50s of musicals from the…
By Peter Filichia "
In the entire sixty-five year history of The Tony Awards, only one Tony-losing play has ever been turned into a Tony-winning musical.
And yet, that Tony-loser -- A Rai…
By Peter Filichia "
Here's a Broadway trivia question that's not easy to answer. What musical opened on a holiday that celebrates a person mentioned in one of its songs?
No, no musical th…
Never mind that 36 years have already passed since A Chorus Line opened on Broadway. What's really astonishing is that five years have already passed since the revival of A Chorus Line opene…
By Peter Filichia "
We have two important anniversaries this week, both as the result of West Side Story. It's celebrating its 54th year of never being out of the public consciousness since…
In celebration of the release of Divine Hair/Mass in F, Lorrie Davis from the original Broadway cast of Hair shares some memories about the show's director Tom O'Horgan.
Lorrie Davis on Tom…
By Peter Filichia --
As we celebrate the 47th anniversary of Fiddler on the Roof this week (on Sept. 22, to be precise), let's take a look at its most famous song -- and one of its least f…
By Peter Filichia --
We might not have had Avenue Q, A Chorus Line, Nine, Once on This Island and Ragtime and plenty of other excellent musicals without him.
He was Lehman Engel, who was t…
By Peter Filichia --
There are many wonderful aspects to the "40th Anniversary Celebration" of Godspell. How often is an original cast album (of the landmark 1971 off-Broadway production) o…
By Peter Filichia
I hate to see a great cast album suffer because of a hurricane.
During the last two weeks of August, Irene became a dirty word in the northeast. But no one should take …
By Peter Filichia --
These days, there are some small recording companies that occasionally record cast albums for musicals that last a week or less. But paradoxically, in the Golden Age o…
By Peter Filichia --
If you planned to see that Broadway revival of The Importance of Being Earnest, alas, it's too late. It closed on June 26 after 189 performances " which is the longest…
By Peter Filichia --
Tom Aldredge died on July 22. Fran Landesman met the same sad fate a day later. But The Nervous Set, the 1959 musical in which he performed and for which she wrote the…
August is the only month in which we don't have a true official holiday. Oh, August 11 is a big day in India and the day after is a big deal in Armenia. But for Americans, such big days as H…
By Peter Filichia --
Even before I started listening to Musical Comedy Favorites by Andre Kostelanetz, I was intrigued by the song listing.
You do know Kostelanetz, don't you? He was an …
Roxie Hart, let alone Mrs. Lovett, wasn't the first musical theater woman to have blood on her hands. Annina was in The Saint of Bleecker Street.
Granted, there were two profound dif…
By Peter Filichia --
If all had gone according to plan, I would have written and posted this column -- marking a sixty-second anniversary -- last Tuesday.
Don't blame me: I'm not the one w…
By Peter Filichia --
You may know Song of Norway, for which Robert Wright and George ("Chet") Forrest adapted melodies from Norwegian classical composer Edvard Grieg. In the '40s, it ran t…
By Peter Filichia --
There was a good deal of talk last week about the change in cigarette packaging. Terribly graphic images are now to be put on the labels.
Why couldn't this have happ…
By Peter Filichia --
Last week, we talked about the Robert Merrill-Patrice Munsel recording of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel that was made in 1955 " when the world wasn't as frank a p…
