Mercoledi Musciale

My friend Stephen posted this little meme (I guess that's what it is still called) on Facebook yesterday.

I won't even bother you with what my name was - I mean these things really are silly aren't they?  And besides not too many people would pay to strip - put my clothes back on maybe but strip?  I think not.

But it reminded me of one of those numbers that the combined talents of Stephen Sondheim, Jule Styne and Jerome Robbins guaranteed would stop the show in any production of that great musical Gypsy.

And here it is done to a turn by the combined talents of Bernadette Peters, Julia McKenzie and Ruthie Henshall - none of who really need a "gimmick to get applause".

And yes that lady at the end is Judi Dench - little known fact: she was scheduled to play Grizabella in the original London production of CATS but snapped her Achilles tendon during rehearsal and was replaced by Elaine Paige three days before the production opened.

05 September - 1698: in an effort to Westernize his nobility, Tsar Peter I of Russia imposes a tax on beards for all men except the clergy and peasantry.

Memorial Musicale

Margret Whiting, who died this week at the age of 86, began her career in the 1940s and was still going - perhaps not as strong as ever but still going - in 2006 when she gave her last performance. From pop to country, Broadway to cabaret she had a style that was instantly recognizable: clear, steady but not brassy with a touch of naivety and as she grew older an ever growing sense of communication. In many ways her life was out of a fairy tale but a fairy tale in which the lovely Princess reached her happily ever after by hard work and talent. I won't go into the details of her private life, the obituaries in the main stream and gay press cover that sufficiently, but thought I would post a few videos of her doing what she did so brilliantly.

Her first big hit was this Rogers and Hammerstein number from State Fair. In the recently released Finishing the Hat, Stephen Sondheim writes critically, and with wit and affection I might add, about his own work and that of other lyricists and composers. Of his mentor and strongest influence Oscar Hammerstein II he writes:

Hammerstein is usually thought of as the Norman Rockwell of lyricists: earthy, optimistic, sometimes ponderously bucolic, a proponent of small town American values, a purveyor of generosity and kindness toward the world and his fellow humans and of empathy for their small sufferings and dreams. And like Rockwell he has been both underestimated (for his craft) and overestimated (for his philosophy).

Stephen Sondheim - Finishing the Hat
Collected lyrics (1954-1981),

with attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes

Virgin Books - 2010

Here she is singing, what was to become her signature tune, It Might As Well Be Spring. This may be bucolic Hammerstein but Ms Whiting gives it a slight wry twists that removes the ponderous!

Though she hadn't appeared on stage since 2006 Margaret Whiting's voice was heard on the soundtrack of the 2009 movie Julie & Julie doing another standard that was earmarked as hers. Time After Time was written in 1947 by Sammy Cahn and Julie Styne and though oft recorded I find this has to be "the" version.

Ms Whiting was a life-long friend of composer Johnny Mercer - after her father died he became a surrogate and mentor. In the past few years she had done much to keep the Mercer songbook alive and a vital part of the music scene. Here she is with Mercer doing a song that sounds perfect for the sort of weather my North American friends have been experiencing.

Fortunately Margaret Whiting has left behind a legacy of recordings charting her career and her place in the musical world of an era. Its a treasure chest worth opening.

Related articles

• Margaret Whiting, Fresh-Faced Singer of Jazz and Pop Standards, Dies at 86 (nytimes.com)

Mercoledi Musciale

Back in 1971 I was in New York City with my friend Peter; we had been invited to the opening night of Maria Stuarda starring Beverly Sills. Friends of his were in the music publishing business and had got tickets. Peter and I decided that we would pursue all sorts of cultural interests over that few days.

On the Wednesday we had a choice of two things - a matinee of the Stephen Sondheim musical Follies or a movie at the 55th St Playhouse. Now let me explain for those of you who may not know the 55th was an art cinema that turned to gay porn when The Boys in the Sand opened there in 1971. So we had to choose between what was to become a Broadway cult classic and a gay cult classic.

We made our choice. We were young, we were foolish and we missed the chance of hearing Dorothy Collins sing one of the great Sondheim songs.



Collins had been a TV and nightclub star for many years and toured in road companies and I remember seeing her in South Pacific back in the mid-60s. Follies was her first appearance on Broadway and though others have sung this song she delivers it the way Sondheim meant it to be sung. No sobs, not grand emotion but raw emotion.

And to think Peter and I could have experienced it first hand. But thank heavens from this TV appearance we have some idea of what we missed.

30 giugno - Protomartiri della Chiesa di Roma

Mercoledi Musicale

As the month of weddings comes to a close and my friends in various States in the Union debate the definition of marriage here's the incredible Madeline Kahn with the ultimate pre-nuptial jitters from Stephen Sondheim's Company.



Believe it or not as rapid as Kahn is with the patter Beth Howland did it faster and with even clear diction in the original Broadway production.

Now someone throw the bouquet!

24 giugno - San Giovanni Batista

Mercoledi Musicale

Stephen Sondheim’s Company became a bit of a cult hit in the 1970 when it premiered in New York. It was progressive, it was edgy and it celebrated the free-wheeling culture of the period.

In this excerpt from the recording of the original cast album Bobby, a single guy with married friends, wakes up to find his one-night stand - god did we ever do things like that? - trying to sneak out. She's a flight attendant and has to head to work.

A sleepy Bobby asks: Where you going?
And she answers truthfully:


And that’s where we’ll be come this friday - Barcelona, not the one-night stand!

18 marzo – San Cirillo di Gerusalemme

Mercolidi Musicale

Today's Mercolidi Musicale is dedicated to my blog buddy the notorious EG. Last week Tony wrote a great piece on music, memories and aging. I tried to think of a comment - you know something witty, wacky and wild but decided this number from Stephen Sondheim's Follies was the best comment to make.



In 1971 I gave up a chance to see a matinee of Follies to go to the 55th Street Playhouse and see Boys in the Sand - talk about the stupidity of youth!

In Everything Was Possible, his remarkable book on the making of Follies, Ted Chapin recalls how as the run progressed Yvonne De Carlo had trouble remembering her lyrics. She encountered problems in this clip but still gives a powerhouse performance.

And Tony, those last lines are for you:

Lord knows, at least I was there.
And I'm here!
Look who's here!
I'm still here!

20 agosto - San Bernardo

A Weekend in the Country

"A Little Night Music" has always been one of my favorite Sondheim musicals - and no not just because of Send in the Clowns (though Glynis Johns and Len Cariou singing it can still reduce me to tears - sadly that video is no longer available on YouTube) but more for the sort of writing heard in numbers like "A Weekend in the Country."


And tomorrow we're going on our own Weekend in the Country and Laurent will get a much-needed break from the glory that is Roma. After work today our friend Linda came and picked up Reese, who will be spending his own weekend in the country at her place. Of course that meant I spent this morning in the kitchen cooking up his food - ground beef, carrots, broccoli, zucchini, green beans and rice, that dog is eating better than some people I know!

Tomorrow morning we set out - our trusty TomTom set for Rieti, about 80 kilometers north-east of here. We're meeting up with a small group of people - Susan from Italytur, two other Canadians and a trio from Naples at the Fiano Romano roundabout and heading for:

• A stroll through an olive orchard with spectacular views of the Appines and an olive tasting
• a visit to an 11th century Monastery including a look at the Illuminated Manuscripts in their Scriptorium
• Lunch at the Monastery
• A visit to an olive mill that still grinds and presses for oil using the old methods
• Then off to Susan's B and B for a cooking class with chef Maurizio concluding with dinner combining some local wines with the fruits (and meat and vegetables) of our labour

That's Saturday then on Sunday:

• Breakfast at the B and B
• A visit to a chestnut grove and processing facility - its chestnut season here and marroni canditi are in all the pastry and sweet shops
• A visit to a castle that has been in one family since it was built in the 10th century
• Lunch at a local wine shop with tastings
• A look-in at Reiti itself - once a major stop on the great Via Salaria

At that point we'll head over to Linda's place about 40 kms away in Capena for dinner with her and Nazareno and pick up Reese. The pace promises to be country-speed and fortunately, not as tenison fraught or hectic as the one Sondheim's characters are about to endure.

They (who the hell are "they" anyway) are calling for 20% chance of showers tomorrow in the Reiti region. Auld Hat, Lorraine, Cowbell and the rest of you Fire Dancers please start your engines and dance those clouds away.

16 novembre - Santa Marguerita di Scozia

Send In The Clowns

Saturday December 8, 1973 - Majestic Theater - A Little Night Music

It was a crowded weekend – Italiana with Marilyn Horne at the Opera Met, the Baroque Angel Christmas tree at the Museum Met, High Mass at St. Mary the Virgin (Smokey Mary’s), lunch at the Russian Tearoom, , non-stop activity – but suddenly that Saturday evening there came a grace note in both the musical and our weekend - a shared moment of melancholy quiet.

Glynis Johns sat motionless at stage left and in a voice that was never really meant to sing broke our hearts. Send In the Clowns had become popular in Judy Collins’ silken - almost sexless - version but here was the woman Sondheim had written it for, singing it the way he meant it to be sung. Singing of middle-aged love and the sadness of chances missed. And in the reprise with Len Cariou singing of the sweet foolishness and deep love that reunited them and would hold them together. It was a magical moment.

As with any magical moment that you discover has been captured you wonder if it was really all that wonderful..... all that magical. Looking at this clip: it was and it still is.

Being Alive - A Song for Valentine's

Stephen Sondheim doesn’t immediately spring to mind as the source of a romantic ballad caroling the joys of love appropriate to Valentine’s Day – if you were to look to Broadway that would be Rogers and Hart, the more saccharine Rogers and Hammerstein or the most saccharine Andrew Lloyd Webber. But my friend David sent me the link to a YouTube video of “Being Alive” from the current Broadway revival of Company and that got me thinking. The sentiments and tone of that brilliant eleven o’clock number strike me as both appropriate and romantic.

Though that Raul Esparza version is searing I prefer this John Barrowman clip for its clarity (despite the filmer’s cough) – you can hear almost all the lyrics.

I saw Company three times when the National Touring production played the Royal Alex back in 1972. Offended subscribers walked out during performances – the same people who had sat tittering through the frontal nudity of Hair couldn’t take the fully-clothed Sondheim-Furth attack on their own ‘70s sexuality. Anne Mervish told me that a number of morally upright Torontonians were canceling their subscriptions to protest the filth upon the wicked stage of Ed’s venerable old theatre. Me? I wanted to see it a 4th time.

What’s so romantic about this particularly number? Listen closely to the lyrics – not just Bobby’s but the remarks of the people around him – his partnered friends. Some are in new relationships, some in old, some in stable ones, some in rocky ones but each one of them has found love and more important company in their relationship.

Bobby sings:
Someone to hold you too close
Someone to hurt you too deep
Someone to sit in your chair
And ruin your sleep
And make you aware of being alive.

Harry says:
You have so many reasons for not being with someone but Robert you haven’t got one good reason for being alone.

And Paul adds:
Don’t afraid that it won’t be perfect, the only thing to be afraid of really is that it won’t be.

No, it doesn’t celebrate the first flush of young love or the glow of romantic love – but it does celebrate the love between people who know that relationships are more than roses, candy and candlelight.

And to my Valentine, thank you for making me aware.