Enchanted Evenings:The Broadway Musical from 'Show Boat' to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber (110 page)

Scene 5: Beyond the lake

I have brought you
(Phantom)

Opening verse to both “Music in the Night” and “Point of No Return,” first heard as underscoring (under the words “Little Lotte”) when Raoul first meets Christine in her dressing room). The melody is based on a whole-tone scale: E F
(ascending) D C (descending)

Reused in
Don Juan Triumphant
(“Don Juan Triumphs once again!”) as the verse for the song “The Point of No Return.”

“The Music of the Night” (complete tune sung by the Phantom)

Scene 6: The next morning

The Phantom at his organ (instrumental only)

Reused in
Don Juan Triumphant
(“Serve the meal and serve the maid!”) (
Don Juan
C)

“Masquerade” (papier-mâché music box)

The beginning of a tune that was heard once before when we saw the music box up for auction in the Prologue to act I. The complete tune opens act II.

I remember
(Christine) (
Don Juan
B)

E-F-B (ascending) F-E (descending) F-B (ascending); Note the prominent use of the tritone between F and B.

Reused in
Don Juan Triumphant
(“Here the sire may serve the dam”)

“Angel of Music” (Christine)

Second phrase of the original song, beginning with the words “Father once spoke of an angel.” The complete song was heard in Christine’s dressing room.

Damn you!
(Phantom)

Curse you!
(Phantom)
Don Juan
A

Beginning with the words “Curse you!” the orchestral underscoring of this passage consists of a melodic variant derived from the whole-tone scale later prominent in the phrase “Those Who Tangle with Don Juan” (the rehearsal scene in act II, scene 4) and reused in
Don Juan Triumphant
(“Passarino, faithful friend”)

Damn you
…
Curse you
… (Phantom)

Elongation of the first four notes of “Music of the Night” (chorus)

Stranger than you dreamt it
—(Phantom)

The material is reused by the Phantom directly before the performance of
Don Juan Triumphant
, but not in the opera itself

Yet in his eyes
(Orchestra)

The orchestra and only the orchestra presents this dramatically important melody for the first time. John Snelson calls this melody the “Sympathy” theme and Jessica Sternfeld labels it the “Yet in his eyes” phrase. It will return four times, the last three of which are sung in three different conversations: Christine to Raoul on the roof (“Yet in his eyes”), Raoul to Christine shortly before
Don Juan Triumphant
(“You said yourself he was nothing but a man”), and Christine to Phantom in his lair during the final scene (“This haunted face holds no horror for me now”).

Come we must return
(Phantom) Recitative

Scene 7: “Don Juan Triumphant”

Thematic Material in
Don Juan Triumphant

Don Juan
A   
Those who tangle with Don Juan
motive

Don Juan
B   
I remember
motive

Don Juan
C    The Phantom at his organ

Don Juan
D   
I have brought you
motive

Don Juan
E    Gypsy motive (
Furtively, we’ll scoff and quaff
)

Don Juan
F   
No thoughts within her head

Orchestra (Introduction)

Turbulent variation on the
Those who tangle with Don Juan
motive (
Don Juan
A) followed by
I remember
(
Don Juan
B)

CHORUS

Here the sire may serve the dam
(based on the
I remember
motive) (
Don Juan
B)

CARLOTTA AND CHORUS

Poor young maiden! For the thrill
(loosely based on
Don Juan
A)

Tangled in the winding sheets!
(rhythm of the Phantom at his organ motive,
Don Juan
C)

Don Juan triumphs once again!
(
I have brought you
motive)

ORCHESTRA

Gypsy motive in 7/8 time,
Don Juan
D, followed by a variation of
Don Juan

A DON JUAN (SIGNOR PIANGI)

Passarino, faithful friend
(
Don Juan
A, extended)

Furtively, we’ll scoff and quaff
(
Don Juan
E)

I shall say: “come—hide with me
” (
Don Juan
E in vocal line;
Don Juan
A in orchestra)

PASSARINO

Poor thing hasn’t got a chance!
(based on
Don Juan
A)

AMINTA (CHRISTINE)

No thoughts within her head
(
Don Juan
F)

Reused in final lair scene on the words “The tears I might have shed for your dark fate grow cold, and turn to tears of hate …”

DON JUAN (now the PHANTOM)

For the trap is set and waits for its prey
(variation on
Don Juan
A)

You have come here
(
Don Juan
D)

I have brought you
(
Don Juan
D)

SONG: “The Point of No Return”

AMINTA (CHRISTINE)

You have brought me
(
Don Juan
D) SONG: “The Point of No Return”

BOTH

SONG: “The Point of No Return”

PHANTOM

SONG: “All I Ask of You” (last part of the song)

Preface to the First Edition

1
.
The Rodgers and Hammerstein Song Book
(New York: Simon & Schuster and Williamson Music, 1956);
Six Plays by Rodgers and Hammerstein
(New York: Modern Library Association, 1959).

2
. Like other Broadway-loving families, especially those residing on the west side of the country, it took the release of the
West Side Story
movie with Natalie Wood for us to become fully cognizant of this show.

3
. “The World of Stephen Sondheim,” interview, “Previn and the Pittsburgh,” channel 26 television broadcast, March 13, 1977.

4
. A chronological survey of Broadway texts from the 1950s to the 1980s might include the following: Cecil Smith,
Musical Comedy in America
; Lehman Engel,
The American Musical Theater
; David Ewen,
New Complete Book of the American Musical Theatre
; Ethan Mordden,
Better Foot Forward
; Abe Laufe,
Broadway’s Greatest Musicals
(New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1977); Martin Gottfried,
Broadway Musicals
; Stanley Green,
The World of Musical Comedy
; Richard Kislan,
The Musical
(Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1980); Gerald Bordman,
American Musical Comedy, American Musical Theatre, American Musical Revue
, and
American Operetta
; Alan Jay Lerner,
The Musical Theatre: A Celebration
; and Gerald Mast,
Can’t Help Singin
.’

5
. See Gerald Bordman,
American Musical Comedy, American Musical Revue
, and
American Operetta
, and Lehman Engel,
The American Musical Theater
.

6
. Miles Kreuger,
“Show Boat”: The Story of a Classic American Musical
; Hollis Alpert,
The Life and Times of “Porgy and Bess.”
The literature on
Porgy and Bess
contains a particularly impressive collection of worthwhile analytical and historical essays by Richard Crawford, Charles Hamm, Wayne Shirley, and Lawrence Starr (see the Selected Bibliography).

7
. Joseph P. Swain,
The Broadway Musical
; Stephen Banfield,
Sondheim’s Broadway Musicals
.

8
. Joseph Kerman,
Opera as Drama
; Paul Robinson,
Opera & Ideas
.

9
. Peter Kivy,
Osmin’s Rage
.

10
. Swain,
The Broadway Musical
, 205.

11
. Stephen Banfield,
Sondheim’s Broadway Musicals
, 6–7.

12
. Ibid., 37. Quotation from Bernstein, 147. For a more detailed exploration of Swain and Banfield and the differences between opera and musicals, see my review essay of Banfield in Block, Review essay, 1996.

A New Preface

1
. Several of the revivals on this list that appeared before 1995 were discussed in the first edition.

2
. Gerald Bordman,
American Operetta, American Musical Comedy
, and
American Musical Revue
; Lehman Engel,
The American Musical Theater
.

3
. Engel,
The American Musical Theater
, xix, 35.

4
. Ibid., 35.

5
. Joseph P. Swain,
The Broadway Musical
.

6
. Geoffrey Block, “Integration,” and Scott McMillin,
The Musical as Drama
.

7
. Block, “Reading Musicals.”

8
. The volumes in Yale Broadway Masters and, in the future, Oxford’s Broadway Legacies, are among recent attempts to fully engage the musical component of a musical. Six volumes of the former series were published between 2003 and 2009:
Richard Rodgers
(Block),
Andrew Lloyd Webber
(John Snelson),
Jerome Kern
(Stephen Banfield);
Sigmund Romberg
(William A. Everett),
Frank Loesser
(Thomas L. Riis), and
John Kander and Fred Ebb
(James Leve).
George Gershwin
(Larry Starr) is scheduled to appear in 2010. Other important recent books in the field that face the music, even when it is not the central concern, include Tim Carter’s
“Oklahoma!,”
Raymond Knapp’s
The American Musical and the Formation of National Identity
and
The American Musical and the Performance of Personal Identity
, bruce d. mcclung’s
Lady in the Dark
, and Mark Eden Horowitz’s
Sondheim on Music
.

9
. Charles Hamm, “Omnibus Review.” The five books reviewed are Jack Gottlieb,
Funny It Doesn’t Sound Jewish
; Mark N. Grant,
The Rise and Fall of the Broadway Musical;
John Bush Jones,
Our Musicals, Ourselves: A Social History of the American Musical Theatre
; Raymond Knapp,
The American Musical and the Formation of National Identity
; and Andrew Most,
Making Americans: Jews and the Broadway Musical
.

10
. For three thoughtful books highly critical of megamusicals see Mark N. Grant,
The Rise and Fall of the Broadway Musical
; Scott McMillin,
The Musical as Drama
; and Ethan Mordden,
The Happiest Corpse
. Even Barry Singer, in a book that is generally sympathetic to musicals of the past thirty years, has little positive to say about Lloyd Webber (Singer,
Ever Afte
r). For positive critical assessments in the scholarly literature see John Snelson’s
Andrew Lloyd Webber
and Jessica Sternfeld’s
The Megamusical
.

11
. George Gershwin (Rodney Greenberg, Howard Pollack, Wayne Schneider); Oscar Hammerstein (Amy Asch); Moss Hart (Steven Bach); Jerome Kern (Stephen Banfield); Arthur Laurents (Arthur Laurents); Frank Loesser (Robert Kimball and Steve Nelson, Thomas L. Riis); Cole Porter (William McBrien); Jerome Robbins (Deborah Jowitt, Greg Lawrence); Richard Rodgers (Geoffrey Block, William G. Hyland, Meryle Secrest); Rodgers and Hammerstein (Tim Carter, Frederick Nolan); and Kurt Weill (Foster Hirsch, Lys Symonette and Kim Kowalke, bruce d. mcclung).