The Light in the Piazza (2005 Original Broadway Cast)
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CD Details
Composer: Adam GuettelPerformer: Victoria Clark
Performer: Kelli O'Hara
Performer: Matthew Morrison
Performer: Sarah Uriarte Berry
Performer: Mark Harelik
Edition: Music CD
Format: Cast Recording
CD Release Date: 2005-05-24
Music Label: Nonesuch
Soundtracks:
- Overture
- Statues and Stories
- The Beauty Is
- Il Mondo Era Vuoto
- American Dancing
- Passeggiata
- The Joy You Feel
- Dividing Day
- Hysteria
- Say It Somehow
- Aiutami
- The Light in the Piazza
- Octet
- The Beauty Is (Reprise)
- Let's Walk
- Clara's Interlude
- Love to Me
- Fable
Music reviews of The Light in the Piazza (2005 Original Broadway Cast)
Music Review: It Feels Like Travel...
Rating: 5 Stars
... was my reaction to the music, a few numbers into the LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA (when they still were playing the full overture). After performing for some months on a cruise ship - and bearing in mind what is said about how you enjoy your travels even more when you remember them - that's exactly what I said to a companion: it feels like travel.
There's not much to add to the favorable words elsewhere in these pages,but a few thoughts:
Some like barbecue, some like sushi, some like both. Good thing to remember when voting for President,by the way.
I will say that my favorite scores are those that keep growing on me (WEST SIDE STORY as well as THE MUSIC MAN) - and LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA reveals something new at every listening.
Besides evoking that travel experience,PIAZZA comes mighty close to answering Cole Porter's question,'What Is This Thing Called Love?' by contrasting three more experienced, unhappy couples with one pair of 'youngsters' who can't be bothered to ask. This presentation is both classic and quirky - we LIKE quirky. If there are occasional bumps in the lyric-setting, there are also many poetic and provocative insights, here in Craig Lucas' territory.
Over the years I've learned not to spoil my own good time by straining too hard to find that 'catchy' tune. And here's a news flash -
The musical theater hasn't generated any Billboard hits in a very long time (HAIRSPRAY has that old top-40 sound, very clever tunesmithing in fact, but only one of its lyrics is liftable from the story - "I Know Where I've Been"). Barbra Streisand managed to find something like a 'hit' in SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE by opening her Broadway Album with "Putting It Together",which became widely familiar as a result; that, and however many foursquare Lloyd Webber ballads have been sold by concert singers, is about as close as Broadway gets to a hit song anymore.
So the 'no hits' charge is moot, got it? Or one may settle for such as JEKYLL & HYDE, whose composer (Frank "I don't need to worry about plot or character" Wildhorn) knocked himself out to write 'hits' that never got beyond some piano bars and minor cabaret venues. Singable,yes...and empty. Broadway, these days, is so full of 'been there, heard that'.
Have I committed one complete PIAZZA song to memory? So far just one, but so many other beautiful and surprising passages keep rebounding within the brain! If it's not material for my piano bar, so what -- there is always MY FAIR LADY or FOLLIES, CHICAGO or SOUTH PACIFIC for quality singalongs. I'll be very happy if and when someone writes a good new singalong score (David Yazbek might yet pull it off); meanwhile
I'll save "La Passegiata"(edited) for a restaurant...enjoy the bistecca Fiorentina and the pretty melody.
Another important point is to admit (when asking rhetorically what everyone else is raving about), that one may not be quite getting something, and to be careful not to arrive at conclusions before a second hearing, at least (to think that I once recoiled at CANDIDE - now I can't get it out of my head!). Praise to the NY Times' Charles Isherwood for rethinking his opinion of Adam Guettel's score for PIAZZA.
On repeated hearings,LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA exceeds even my delighted first impressions. You may feel differently, but until you've listened at least twice, I can't HEAR you......
Description of The Light in the Piazza (2005 Original Broadway Cast)
The Light in the Piazza is arguably one of the most highly anticipated theatrical events of the decade for serious Broadway theatergoers. The Los Angeles Times has already declared its creator, Nonesuch artist Adam Guettel, "a composer for the new century," on the strength of his two Off-Broadway productions, the 1996 Obie-Award winning "folk musical" Floyd Collins and the 1998 song cycle, Myths and Hymns, TIME has described him as "a startlingly original songwriter." Few theatrical composers have been watched as closely as Guettel, and few musicals in the course of their development have generated so much substantial press or been praised so highly on the road as The Light in the Piazza. Both the New Yorker and The New York Times magazine devoted in-depth coverage to the evolution of Guettel's sophisticated, deeply moving score. New Yorker critic John Lahr decided,"Guettel's kind of talent cannot be denied. He shouldn't change for Broadway; Broadway, if it is to survive as a creative theatrical force, should change for him."Like a shimmering pearl, The Light in the Piazza emerged from a sea of revivals, rehashings, and movie adaptations to secure 11 2005 Tony nominations, including Best Musical. Based on an Elizabeth Spencer novella (which was also made into a 1962 film), it follows a mother, Margaret (Victoria Clark), and her daughter, Clara (Kelli O'Hara), as they take a vacation to Italy. There, Clara and a young Italian (Matthew Morrison) fall in love, but Margaret is determined to keep them apart.
The Light in the Piazza doesn't fit the model of most Broadway scores, with a splashy opener here, a swing number there, then the big ballad. The score is more of a unified whole, sometimes jarring, sometimes following the patterns of speech, and sometimes unfolding in glorious sheens of sound. (Heck, some of it's even in Italian!) In that sense, it's similar to another unconventional American musical set in Italy, Stephen Sondheim's Passion, which is more chamber opera than musical, and composer-lyricist Adam Guettel (song of Mary Rodgers, grandson of Richard Rodgers) seems the most likely heir apparent to Sondheim in the current generation of musical theater creators. O'Hara's voice soars in the score's most beautiful moments ("Say It Somehow," the title song), but Clark enjoys two exquisitely lyrical moments with "Dividing Day" and "Let's Walk." She was one of the show's six Tony winners (for Leading Actress), along with Guettel's score and the orchestrations, scenice design, lighting, and costumes, while O'Hara (for Featured Actress), Morrison, Craig Lucas's book, and Bartlett Sher's direction were also nominated. --David Horiuchi
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