Showboat footnote

From my wife Anne Midgette’s terrific review on Musical America (you have to subscribe to the site — well worthwhile — to read the full text). I agree with all of this, but couldn’t have put it this well:

Show Boat,” the 1927 musical by Jerome Kern and

Oscar Hammerstein II, represents a turning point in the history of the

American musical. And you’d better remember it; Carnegie Hall certainly

did. The gala semi-staged performance it presented for its own benefit

on Tuesday night wore its significance like the Pope his heavy golden

robes: with a self-consciousness about representing a link to the past

and concern about rising appropriately to the occasion. God forbid it

should be only perceived as light entertainment.

The American

musical has in any case reached a museum-like phase of its history,

when it has become appropriate for exploration by the so-called serious

classical music organizations. Gone is the sense of tacit disapproval

that accompanied New York City Opera’s early forays into musicals in

the mid-1980′s under Beverly Sills – the idea that an otherwise

highbrow institution was simply going slumming in search of audiences.

This spring alone, we’ve had “Camelot” at the New York Philharmonic,

now “Show Boat” at Carnegie Hall and a revival of “South Pacific” that

is one of the hottest tickets on Broadway. The question is no longer

whether the American musical is appropriate fare, but how high we can

make the pedestal on which to place it.

The risk, of course -

just as it has long been in opera – is that the original dramatic

impulse gets lost in all the pomp. Tuesday night, particularly the

first half of the evening, showed the spectacle of a number of people

going through some pretty grand motions. The stilted gestures of “The

Parson’s Bride” – the play-within-a-play that illustrates the charming

world of the 1880′s that “Show Boat” seeks to recreate – were hard to

separate from the “real” acting, as the players spat out lines with

cramped intensity or delivered jokes as if within veritably audible

quotation marks. The symbol of this particular evening was less “Ol’

Man River,” sung doughtily by Alvy Powell (who has an earth-shaking

bass and very little top) than a cameo walk-on by Marilyn Horne, whose

entrance in the last act stopped the show for minutes of applause. She

then delivered a couple of throw-away lines and walked off again.

History, in short, was represented rather than made anew….

Another component was the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, which, under

Paul Gemignani (now elevated to patron-saint status) sounded like it

was attempting to play “Tosca”: the result was not at all idiomatic,

but very pretty and very earnest.