A White House Cantata (1600 Pennsylvania Avenue) Leonard Bernstein & Alan Jay Lerner - Utrecht 2018
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- Опубліковано 13 лис 2021
- Bernstein & Lerner's 1976 flop "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue" gets the concert treatment.
Cast:
First Lady: Heidi Stober, Seena: Nicole Cabell, Lud: Lukhanyo Moyake, President: Mark Stone
The Netherlands Radio Choir & The Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra
Conductor : Wayne Marshal - Розваги
The first act of the original musical is absorbing, but that second act... Bernstein entrusted the play to Lerner and he had no idea how to resolve the thing.
Thank you for posting this performance. How this “flopped” I’ll never understand. And how there aren’t revivals and multiple different studio and concert recordings of this work I will also never understand. This reminds me of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s life story: from Wunderkind to Box Office Poison, not through any real altering of audience tastes but through jealous acts and critic-engineered sabotage.
I know it is a long shot but if someone could translate the parts of the subtitles that are in Dutch I'd be eternally grateful
Of "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue," which bears the subtitle "A Musical About the Problems of Housekeeping," LA Times classical music critic Mark Swed recently wrote that it was time for this "long-dismissed, race conscious White House musical to be revived." He called the musical "one of the great works of political theater, one that would stand with the works of Brecht and Weill if the book were a bit better."
The best, the most passionate elements of this score are as good as American theatre music gets. The show is hopelessly flawed, and still, there are so many moments that exhilarate, and more valuably, move me. For those just coming to this work, elsewhere on UA-cam, you can find the entirety of the show as it was performed in Philadelphia in 1976. And there are recordings of Patricia Routledge performing "Duet For One", and though her singing is imperfect, the brilliance of her performance is greeted with as impressive - and deserved - ovation as I have ever heard.
ua-cam.com/video/Im9E6uWKSoA/v-deo.html
Aaron Sorkin is revising Alan Jay Lerner's book for *Camelot* this season (2023). If that proves successful, I wonder if he might try his hand at *1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.*
@@WestVillageCrank I don't necessarily think the work is "hopelessly flawed." It's just that Americans like to think of their country as the best in the world, and white Americans in particular don't like being told that racism against Black people is the country's original sin. Were "1600" to be revived today, Fox News talking heads would be all over it complaining that it involved "critical race theory." Perhaps in its ideal form it was quite long, and it is really more of an opera than a musical. But in the 1976 Philadelphia version (except for the equipment failure delay) it was a great show indeed. Between Philadelphia and New York, Bernstein and Lerner were both forced out of their own creation, and Gilbert Moses and George Faison of The Wiz was brought in to try to "modernize" the show. Presumably by that point the producers had decided that given the theme and angry tone of the book that it was best to target a Black audience. But Bernstein did not compose a "Wiz-like" score of popular music. It was very much a classical and operatic score. And Faison's edits transitioned the show from "one with problems" to a "bad show." The removal of the "play within a play" concept removed a considerable amount of music and some great songs such as "The Nation That Wasn't There," and the climactic song of the original play, "American Dreaming," at which the white and Black actors playing the President and chief butler of the White House have reached their boiling point and decide to leave the show. Because in the original, the play is analogous to the United States itself (a play "always in rehearsal") the incident shows their disillusionment with the country itself. The scene is quite analogous to the crisis of faith the Celebrant has in Bernstein's "Mass." Yet, as in the earlier work, a new-found purpose and faith lead them to reconsider, and the play closes with the wonderful anthem "To Make Us Proud." What is ultimately needed is that all the songs and music be added back in; the work needs to be designated an opera rather than a musical, and most of the spoken dialogue needs to be removed. I think in that form, it will be well-received.
Forgot to include that one of the worst things Faison did was to destroy the lovely "Monroviad" by cutting "The Mark of a Man" off of its ending, and moving it to the second act, where it is sung by a different president, and is therefore no longer a duet with the First Lady, and is moved a full step lower in key. Thus the glorious moment is lost when the President and First Lady sing"Not heeding the cries of the clever and wise, but only his soul. But only his soul!" while the orchestra plays the opening motive of "Take Care of This House" beneath them. It is a musical gesture worthy of Puccini, and perhaps the most glorious passage in an American theatrical work I have ever heard. But the Broadway audiences never heard it.
@@jdoggtn7 @jdoggtn7 I appreciate your thoughtful response. When I assert the show is hopelessly flawed - yes, I know I am repeating the judgment - it I am referring to its dramaturgy and structure, not its politics. Even in its original form, its "rehearsal" frame is clumsy, awkward and inherently un-dramatic. (In crude terms, the stakes are low.) The musical is not unlike another 1976 show, PACIFIC OVERTURES, which while sounder structurally, still suffers from being more of an historical pageant than exploration of character or a something with a logical plot that builds to a fitting dramatic climax. (And as happened in some of Lerner's latter work, the 1600 humor has evolved from deft to ham-handed.) None of this is to deny the passion, sincerity, exuberance, invention, and excellence of Bernstein's music, nor of the best of Lerner's lyrics (as opposed to the worst of them). As for the show's politics, again, while well-intentioned, they are, like many of Lerner's lyrics, ham-handed> These two men of admirable, steadfast liberal leanings, with devotion to the best of America's aspirations, view things - and how could they not? - through the prism of white, intellectual, private school-educated privilege. Their joint view of the African-American experience feels viewed, not lived. I would suggest that with dialogue removed, it would be more singspiel than opera. I tend to favor Stephen Sondheim's definition of opera, which refers more to the quality of the voices rather than exclusively the quality of the music. Calling it an "opera" would demand opera singers, and my feeling is they would tend to over-sing, if you will. These days, I think there are superb musical theatre performers who have both the musicianship and voices to put over the score without giving it the operatic quality that would make the work pompous and ponderous. (And even without opera singers, the score frequently skirts the borders of pompous and ponderous.) If I seem contrary - and I would suppose I do - I adore the score, even with its occasional Lernerian lapses. "The Nation That Wasn't There" - and its predecessor, "The House That Wasn't There", are beautiful. All that said, if someone has the resources to get 1600 back on its feet, I'd be there. And I'd be hopeful.
As for Sorkin's re-working of CAMELOT, he might be able to pull it off, but he faces the same problem Lerner faced - and could not lick: the shifts in tone become more problematic, especially in the show's second act. One of Lerner's biggest issues was the trial and execution (failed) of Guinevere. Since there is, to the best of my knowledge, no musical material other than "Guinevere" to cover this, it either become an on-stage event with no supporting musical material, or remains an off-stage event, which is problematic for a plot's climactic scene.