Word: librettos
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...spite of these criticisms, however, Blitzstein's work is a success, and not only because he shows that an American can write a serious musical which is theatrically effective. The libretto--which he wrote himself--is concise with a welcome absence of trivia. The arias get somewhere and the words are skillfully treated in the music. Only once does he allow himself to be led astray by his social conscience into a long scene in which the Negroes make fun of the gossipping society at Regina's ball...
...story was familiar, at least in outline: Librettist Eric (Let's Make an Opera) Crozier had freely adapted his comic libretto from Guy de Maupassant's Le Rosier de Madame Husson. A bumpkin is chosen King of the May because in the village there is no girl virtuous enough to be Queen, eventually winds up on a roaring toot. To this, Composer Britten hitched a witty, somewhat Peter and the Wolf-ish score, in which each instrument seemed to portray (or mock) a character on stage. There were other Britten trademarks: well-fitting songs and exciting ensembles. Even...
Some customers feel that the libretto should have been poured over a waffle instead of an audience, but most of them like Weill's witty, musicianly development of the folk themes (Down in the Valley...
...with six zanies shifting the scenery in amusing dance patterns while the play went on. No voices were outstanding, but Haydn's rollicking ensembles and the well-rehearsed way the Lemonaders sang them were the hit of the show. Next biggest hit: the eminently singable, notably contemporary English libretto of onetime Berlin Music Critic John Gutman, who now has a job in Manhattan's Wall Street. Sample, from a quintet pondering the advisability of admitting the miserly father to the "harmonious" life on the moon...
...show is by no means up to the production. But it is surefire popular stuff, filled with surefire popular stuffing. Hammerstein & Logan have contrived a shrewd mixture of tear-jerking and rib-tickling, of sugar & spice and everything twice. Their musical play is far superior to the usual libretto nonsense; it is quite the equal, in fact, of the usual movie yarn. To all those for whom the plot's the thing, for whom heartbeats are more important than dance steps, South Pacific will seem-as it may well be-a perfect union of film and footlights. For others...