Leonard bernstein compositions3/17/2023 ![]() Only five made it into Broadway production, which starred Jean Arthur as Peter Pan, and Boris Karloff as George Darling and Captain Hook. Bernstein was asked to compose incidental music and dances for the show, but "losing his head" in the excitement of the project, he wrote seven additional songs. Barrie's Peter Pan was a "play with songs" that predated the Mary Martin-led musical televised by NBC. Disappointingly, the studio replaced much of Bernstein's score, fearing it "too classical" and "too difficult" for audiences. In the musical, they find it in three one-of-a-kind women: aggressive cabbie Brunhilde Esterhazy, a repressed anthropologist named Claire DeLoone, and a Coney Island belly dancer, Ivy Smith, who's been named this month's "Miss Turnstiles." Five years after its Broadway premiere, On the Town was made into an MGM movie starring Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra. The basic story was the same in both mediums: Three sailors on shore leave in New York City seek female companionship. Betty Comden and Adolph Green provided the book and lyrics for the musical (and costarred in the original Broadway production). On the Town sprang from a ballet, Fancy Free, which Bernstein collaborated on with choreographer Jerome Robbins. ![]() (Zodiac Photographers-Abeles/Friedman, Wikimedia Commons) Ron Husmann as a sailor on shore leave and Bernadette Peters as a carnal cabbie in the 1971 Broadway revival of On the Town. In its own tribute to Bernstein, TheaterMania has put together this overview of his Broadway work. (So did his one-act opera Trouble in Tahiti, which appeared alongside a Tennessee Williams play and dances by Paul Draper in All in One.) Not all were hits, but even flops like 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue have scores that are admired today for blending hummable melodies, invigorating rhythms, and symphonic complexity. Theatergoers eager for full productions have the Olney Theatre Center's On the Town in June and Barrington Stage Company's West Side Story in August to look forward to.īernstein wrote a total of six musicals, each of which made it to Broadway. Preceding them is an April 18 concert production of Candide at Carnegie Hall, featuring John Lithgow as Voltaire and Dr. The Boston Pops's celebration of the composer, who made his professional conducting debut with the orchestra at the age of 22, includes a semistaged production of On the Town on May 31 and June 1 as well as a concert performance of West Side Story on June 15 and 16. The New York Philharmonic, where he served as music director from 1958 to 1969, rang in 2018 with a New Year's Eve Bernstein on Broadway program, part of a season-long Bernstein festival. His contributions to musical theater are reflected in this year's centennial tributes across the United States. Their forms were as eclectic as their styles: symphonies, choral pieces, ballets, operas, an original film score ( On the Waterfront), and most memorably, musicals. ![]() His melting-pot works combined jazz, blues, Broadway, rock, gospel, folk, orchestral, and liturgical music. A conductor, pianist, and educator, he was also a distinctly American composer. Born 100 years ago, Leonard Bernstein lives on through his music.
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