484 stories from Masterworks Broadway
By Peter Filichia --
This June is bustin' out all over with a recording of Carousel that hasn't been available for decades. Look around! Look around! Look around! The first studio cast alb…
You learn something new every day " or you're supposed to. And I did when "Scooterberwyn" and "BwayPassion" wrote to correct me on a lyric I'd cited. When I wrote about Damn Yankees last wee…
By Peter Filichia ---
It's a record that will probably never be beaten: The New York Yankees' Joe DiMaggio got a hit in 56 straight games in 1941. All the pitchers he conquered during that…
By Peter Filichia --
More often than not, when the leads of a studio recording get into the recording booth, they're meeting for the first time. Their lack of chemistry is far too obvious …
Admit it: when you became interested in musical theater and ran into albums for New Faces of 1952 and New Faces of 1956, you automatically assumed that there was a New Faces on Broadway each…
By Peter Filichia --
May 10 marks the 112th birthday of the show business celebrity who's been named in probably more theater songs than anyone else.
All right, I haven't done a concerted …
It all started on a summer day at home when my parents were driving back from their weekend away. My mom had just gotten a call from Bill Franzblau. (The producer of Little House on The Prai…
I'll never forget the day I was at a big musical theater exhibit at the Lincoln Center Library of the Performing Arts. To enhance our experience, the sound system was playing selections from…
By Peter Filichia
It opened on April 11, 1936, and MasterworksBroadway is celebrating its 75th anniversary in style. It's made the first-ever recording of On Your Toes again available.
On…
By Peter Filichia --
I know, I know. You've o.d.'d on Annie. In fact, you o.d.'d on it long ago. That's what happens when a musical becomes a smash hit and never for a second leaves the pub…
By Peter Filichia --
All right, it may not be the most significant anniversary in theatrical history. But for the record, 14 years ago this week " on April 16, 1997 -- David Ives's new pla…
By Peter Filichia --
Well, it's April, which makes me think of Company. Not just because it opened 41 years ago this month. Not just because it has a character named April.
But also, bec…
By Peter Filichia --
We can't let March go by without celebrating the anniversary of one of the greatest musicals of all time. Fifty-five years ago this month, My Fair Lady opened.
If …
By Peter Filichia --
How many rock musicals begin with a waltz?
All right, the song that starts Inner City will never be confused with a Strauss waltz. It's a jazz waltz, but it's in …
My mother, Eve Merriam, wrote the successful but controversial book of rhymes called The Inner City Mother Goose, which became the basis for the Broadway musical Inner City, conceived and di…
By Peter Filichia
How well I remember the early morning of Friday, March 15, 2002.
I had to go out-of-town, and my friend Ken Bloom had volunteered to drive me to the airport, even though …
By Peter Filichia --
If you can get to the always excellent Transport Group's current production of Hello, Again, so much the better. But if you cannot, there's always the excellent origina…
By Peter Filichia
It's been 38 years now since A Little Night Music opened and Fredrik told Desiree, "You must meet my wife." Indeed we did, in one of Stephen Sondheim's most fetching waltz…
By Peter Filichia --
Spent Presidents Day thinking about presidents who've shown up in musicals.
Recall that Lola sang, "You've seen the sign that says, 'George Washington once slept here…
By Peter Filichia --
Most long-time football fans don't realize it, but they know a song from The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.
How can this be? The musical version of James Thurber's sho…
By Peter Filichia "
Fifty years ago, Camelot was in the middle of its six-week reign as The #1 Record Album in the land.
Not The #1 Musical Theater Record Album in the land. The #1 Record…
By Peter Filichia --
So this is the week we celebrate Groundhog Day, which has taken on a new and different meaning ever since that Bill Murray movie debuted in 1993. In case you've missed…
Once The Small World of Charity was announced in early 1965, all Broadway was looking forward to this new Bob Fosse musical that would star Gwen Verdon. But there was never anything small …
By Peter Filichia --
Since MasterworksBroadway and Arkiv have made concerted efforts to re-release a number of stage recordings of yore, I've found that my friends have been most looking f…
By Peter Filichia --
It's one of the worst-kept secrets of musical theater. Many a song that was written for one musical wound up dropped " but some time later wound up in another show.
I…
