Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Gershwin: An American in Paris; Hamlisch: A Chorus Line

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:

We remain in Broadway mode this Sunday, as I present recordings of two very different specimens of American musical theater. The first one, although contemporary, looks back to a bygone Golden Age of the American musical. An American in Paris the musical mines the wealth of George Gershwin's music, in a score adapted for the modern-day stage by Rob Fisher. The stage production, with book by Craig Lucas, takes its inspiration from the 1951 Academy Award winning movie; it also takes its title and tunes from Gershwin's 1928 orchestral tone poem. The show opened on Broadway at the Palace Theater on April 12, 2015. The original cast recording of An American in Paris the musical came out on a single CD last year through Sony Masterworks Broadway.

The year 2015 marked the fortieth anniversary of the innovative Marvin Hamlisch musical A Chorus Line. How could a show that has no stars, no set and almost no story line at all become such a gigantic hit? It even had a hit song "What I Did for Love." A Chorus Line came along at a time of the changing of the guard on old Broadway. It heralded the arrival of a new generation on the theater scene in New York City, and it expressed the life experiences of the young "baby boomers." Here were stage characters unafraid, for instance, to talk to audiences about being openly gay. These characters danced their way into theatergoers' hearts. Sony Broadway has reissued the original cast recording of A Chorus Line with eight bonus tracks that are of considerable historical interest. We get to hear the lyricist Ed Kleban singing numbers he wrote for the show, three of which were cut and have never been heard before, with Hamlisch accompanying him on piano.