The recording of Adam Guettel's incandescent score for the lovely
limited-run musical that captured the 2005 Tony Award for best new score for
a musical is a lovely souvenir of the show for those fortunate enough to
have witnessed it at Lincoln Center. It is also a great resource for those
who would like to familiarize themselves with the material prior to seeing
it if they are lucky enough to have tickets to see the show before its New
Year's Day, 2006, closing. It is not, however, something likely to sit in
your CD player providing background music even if you happen to be the type
that can use show music as a background to your life. No, the score is
entirely too demanding of close attention to be anything but
front-and-center. Here's a piece for serious and repeated listening. It is a
shame that it doesn't have a good synopsis in its 50 page book so that some
of the intricacies of the plot can be appreciated without having actually
seen the show. Instead, they provide a synopsis online but who knows how
long that synopsis will remain on their website? |
Storyline: Mother and daughter from Winston-Salem are on vacation in Italy
in 1953 when the daughter's hat is blown off in the wind only to be caught
by a charming young Italian boy. Love ensues, to the consternation of the
over-protective mother who carries the burden of guilt of an accident in the
girl's childhood that left her slightly mentally challenged. As the daughter
learns what love is, so does the mother.
The score is by Adam Guettel. He is so often
identified as Richard Rodgers' grandson and Mary Rodgers' son that you might
think his credentials are familial rather than personal. Don't believe it!
His is a talent facilitated by skill earned in study and honed on impressive
earlier works. These included the country-sound infused score for Floyd Collins
and the jazz toned Myths and Hymns. Neither of these really sound like
country music or jazz, but both sound like the product of the same
musical brain. Here that brain is working in a classically arioso frame that
some will even find a bit operatic, but it is the same facility of structure
and long-lined melodic inventiveness that mark the work. His lyrics are
marvels of mixture using Italian when the local characters talk among
themselves, English for the Americans and a halting, evolving mixture as
they learn to communicate with each other. The effort of the Italian boy to find the
words to express his feelings to the daughter include struggles like "Now is
I am happiness. Never I am unhappiness. Now is I am happiness with you."
That is just lovely, especially as set to his score. Many who think of show
music as Fiddler on the Roof or even Hello, Dolly may find the
near-operatic feel of some of the score a bit off-putting, but those who want
more than a rousing 32 bar A-A-B-A song and who appreciate vocal purity will
thrill to this score.
Craig Lucas' book is based on a novella
published in The New Yorker in 1960 which was made into a movie starring
Olivia de Havilland in 1962. The appeal of his book is that he makes the
right choices both in the clarity of the storytelling and in the selection
of elements to be told in song as opposed to text. He leaves just the right
emotional moments in Guettel's oh-so-capable hands while moving the story
forward with important information revealed in proper order and at proper
times. The audience gets caught up in the romance of it all and comes
to care not just about the young couple falling in love - it is always easy
to get audiences to care about young lovers - but about the mother, the
boy's parents and even his siblings.
Of course, it helps that Victoria Clark
gives a performance that not only received, but deserved the Tony, as the
mother, and that Kelli O'Hara is a marvel as the daughter. The rest of
the cast is wonderful as well. The CD captures the charm and wonder in
Matthew Morrison's performance as the young Italian boy. Ted Sperling
conducts an augmented full orchestra in the orchestrations that won a Tony
Award for Guettel,
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