THAT OTHER SOUTH PACIFIC By Peter Filichia
Frankly, I don’t think that I’d ever listened to it.
But I did reach for that SOUTH PACIFIC recording as soon as I arrived home from the Goodspeed Opera House.
(Not so incidentally, at the legendary Connecticut showplace, there’s an extraordinary production of the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic.)
Are your eyebrows still as high as an elephant’s forehead after reading my opening sentence?
“What!” you exclaimed. “You’ve never listened to SOUTH PACIFIC?!?!”
Oh, of course I’ve heard the legendary Mary Martin/Ezio Pinza original cast album.
(Pretty good, isn’t it?)
No, I’m talking about the 1967 revival cast album of the production mounted during the few years in that decade that Music Theater of Lincoln Center operated.
Florence Henderson, a couple of years before her Brady Bunch days, played Ensign Nellie Forbush while Georgio Tozzi portrayed Emile de Becque.
I wasn’t around to see the production, but many who did were not encountering Tozzi in the role for the first time – in a manner of speaking.
Make that “in a manner of singing.” For the 1958 film, Tozzi had provided the singing voice that the on-screen Rossano Brazzi could not.
I chose to play this one recording instead of the original cast album because the Goodspeed cast reminded me that one doesn’t have to be Martin or Pinza to do justice to the musical. If you can get to East Haddam by August 11, you’ll relish the fetching Danielle Wade and the uber-masculine Omar Lopez-Cepero shining in the leads.
How impressive, too, that Joan Almedilla was able to find genuine dignity in Bloody Mary, a character that many before her have not been directed to embrace. Give the requisite credit to director Chay Yew, too.
That Henderson and Tozzi got a chance to record had to do with the advent of stereophonic sound. It had arrived in earnest in the mid-’50s, years too late for the 1949 recording of SOUTH PACIFIC.
Stereo, as it was chummily called, was truly revolutionary. Many a visitor to an audiophile’s home was commanded to “Stand right here!” The host wanted to fully show off his state-of-the-art equipment: brass and voices emerged from one speaker while woodwinds and other voices burst forth from the other.
To further entice sound-centric folks, RCA Victor devised a series called “Stereo Action: The Sound Your Eyes Can Follow.” Different instruments and voices would travel across the room from the left speaker to the right one and then back again.
RCA’s LET IT RIDE!, HOW TO SUCCEED and OLIVER! used this technology to replicate the feeling of cast members crossing the stage. As many times as you may have played those, you may have missed this phenomenon, for so many of us listen to our recordings while cooking in the kitchen or cleaning our bathroom tile.
This once, sit down in front of your speakers, do nothing else but play one, two or all of these, and you’ll hear and feel the actors move.
While we’re at it, let’s mention Stereo Action Goes Broadway. This album didn’t just offer the title song of CAMELOT, but it also started with a noisy drawbridge clinking its way open from right to left. Then we heard a knight on a horse clop-clop-clopping his way from the castle (right) to points beyond (left).
Gimmicky? Yes.
Fun? Sure.
As for SOUTH PACIFIC, that Columbia Records would give it a new stereo recording was, at the time, slightly surprising.
Yes, the marketplace eventually saw new stereo recordings of ANNIE GET YOUR GUN and THE BOY FRIEND among many others. Decca had waxed the former in 1946, but RCA recorded the 20th anniversary revival.
Turnabout is fair play: RCA had issued THE BOY FRIEND in 1954, but Decca did the 1970 revival.
But note that Columbia Records had done the original FINIAN’S RAINBOW, KISMET and KISS ME, KATE in one-channel monaural sound and didn’t partake in subsequent stereo recordings. So, given that Columbia had recorded the original SOUTH PACIFIC, why do this new one and invite the inevitable comparison?
Goddard Lieberson, then president of Columbia and the producer of the Martin/Pinza original, apparently didn’t fear that a new recording would be damaging competition.
This time, he wouldn’t produce it; he gave that assignment to his protégé Edward Kleban. Little did Kleban know at the time that in 13 years, the musical for which he’d write lyrics – A CHORUS LINE – would surpass SOUTH PACIFIC’s 1,925 performance.
(In fact, it would still have more than 4,000 performances to go before closing.)
So, why for years did I ignore this second New York cast album of SOUTH PACIFIC? My guess is that I bought several recordings on the same day, and whenever you do that, one or more of them will be neglected.
Now that I’ve finally listened, I’ll apologize to all concerned. Henderson, Tozzi and everyone else have turned out to be worthy heirs to the 1949 cast. But you don’t have to wait until they sing to be amazed. You’ll note the startlingly impressive difference at the first notes of the overture’s “Bali H’ai.”
Yes, the stereo sound is a factor, but what’s even more arresting is Jonathan Anderson’s conducting. He goes at a slightly speedier but more assured pace than original musical director Salvatore Dell’Isola.
Longtime Broadway observers may call that heresy. Rodgers and Hammerstein obviously believed in Dell’Isola, for starting with ALLEGRO in 1947, he would conduct four of their future six stage musicals. FLOWER DRUM SONG, Dell’Isola’s final effort for them, got him a Tony as Best Conductor and Musical Director (in the days when that award was given).
Rodgers was president and producing director of the Music Theater of Lincoln Center and could have hired anyone he wanted. So, why Anderson? Had he soured on Dell’Isola? Or was he greatly impressed with what Anderson had achieved when conducting that aforementioned ANNIE GET YOUR GUN that Music Theater of Lincoln Center had produced in 1966?
Whatever happened, Anderson certainly made good – very good, in fact – on Rodgers’ choice.
Last week, on my usual Sunday stint at www.broadwayradio.com, I lamented my long-held objection to SOUTH PACIFIC. In Act One, Scene Seven, Emile proposes in song. Nellie sings, “And yet you want to marry me?” to which he sings, “I do.”
What he doesn’t do is tell her that she’ll be an instant stepmother to two little children.
My colleague Michael Portantiere wisely suggested that they should be heading towards marriage, but not finalizing it right then and there. Let them commit to each other at the end of the show.
But here’s the thing: Lieberson apparently thought so, too, for he put that musical sequence at the end of the album. Wish that Rodgers and Hammerstein saved it for the final moments, too.
Apparently Kleban agreed, for he, too, put this sequence as the final track on his revival recording.
One final fun fact: Jonathan Anderson started his Broadway career as a conductor in THE VISIT. Are you asking, “How could someone conducting in the ’60s start his Broadway career with a 2015 musical?”
No, he was a conductor in the original 1958 production of the Friedrich Duerrenmatt play.
“Oh, it had music?” you’re now asking.
No.
In that first iteration of THE VISIT, Anderson played a train conductor.
Peter Filichia can be heard most weeks of the year on www.broadwayradio.com. His new book – BRAINTEASERS FOR BROADWAY GENIUSES – is now available on Amazon and at The Drama Book Shop.
