From: conrad@brahms.udel.edu (Jon Conrad)
Subject: Re: South Pacific
Organization: University of Delaware
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 17:51:15 GMT

In article <2A9BAAD5.19287@orion.oac.uci.edu> jdooley@maemaster.eng.uci.edu (John R. Dooley) writes:

>A few weeks ago I bought the updated recording of "Girl Crazy" and
>(well) I love it.  

If you mean the Nonesuch recording conducted by John Mauceri, great!  (I
wrote the essay about the orchestrator in the booklet.)  I don't want to
make a big fuss about labels, but I wonder why you call it "updated" --
the big effort was to recreate the style of the time.  Again, the term
is no big deal, I just want to make sure we're talking about the same
recording.

>I was thinking of buying another "operatic"
>look at the American musical 

Again, odd choice of words -- a cast starring Lorna Luft, Judy Blazer,
and David Carroll is "operatic"?  If you just mean, "carefully
prepared," fine, but again I have this worry that we're thinking of
totally different recordings.  However, I'll proceed on the basis that
we all mean the Nonesuch.

>and the one that leaps out at me is
>"South Pacific".  But, I have some trepidation.  

Rightly so.  :-(

>Carreras, Patinkin,
>and Vaughan seem well cast to their parts, 

Actually Carreras is wrong wrong wrong.  Emile Debecque was conceived
for an operatic voice, it's true, but for one of the great basses (Ezio
Pinza) of the century.  All his music sits "down" in the range, and even
after they've transposed it up for Carreras it still heads down.  The
only thing going for him is his accent.  Wrong voice, no style.

Vaughan might have been fine in a rethought jazz-style South Pacific,
but with the original arrangements she sounds out of synch; her improvs
come off as mistakes (I know they weren't, but it's a stylistic mismatch
nevertheless).  Still, she's ok, and Patinkin is indeed ideally cast.
Just about his last performance that shows his real talents in fact
(he's sort of gone off the deep end since then).

>but I worry about Kiri
>Te Kawana in the old Mary Martin role.  (I have heard her as Eliza
>Doolittle in "My Fair Lady" and I much prefer Julie Andrews.)

And she's a closer fit for Liza (which is at least a kind of soprano 
part, and English) than for Nellie.  I'll give her credit: she adapts 
her voice to sound like a pop singer, but she's totally uninteresting 
doing it.  Her music just lays there; add that to Carreras and it's a 
pretty sad waste of time.

>So, if anyone's heard this version of "South Pacific" I'd appreciate
>comments good or bad ... and opinions on how it compares (as
>performance) to the Broadway recording with Mary Martin.

Nowhere close to the Mary Martin / Ezio Pinza recording.  That was a
classic pairing, and points up how clever Richard Rodgers was in
dramatizing "two people from different worlds."  Those two certainly
were, vocally speaking, yet they made a wonderful team.  Hell, one
needn't look to a superstar like Mary Martin for a better Nellie; 
Mitzi Gaynor was better in the movie, and Florence Henderson is vastly
better on an old CBS recording of a Lincoln Center cast (with Giorgio
Tozzi; out of print, but it deserves reissue).

No, the JC/KTK South Pacific is pretty much the classic example of Bad
Crossover Recordings of Musicals.  It doesn't prove that "opera singers
can't do musicals" or anything like that; just that you need to get the
right ones, and cast them in the right parts.

As a positive example of which, may I recommend the Angel SHOW BOAT,
conducted by John McGlinn, with Frederica von Stade, Jerry Hadley,
Teresa Stratas, and Bruce Hubbard from the opera world, and Paige O'Hara
and David Garrison from the pop side.  Now THIS shows what well-cast
opera singers can do for a show: it was a revelation and a deserved
best-seller.  Angel later issued a one-CD highlights album, but I would
urge you to get the 3-CD complete set: you'll get all kinds of extras
and alternatives, and the full underscoring with the dialog that fits
over it.  This is a classic.

After that I'd recommend the Nonesuch STRIKE UP THE BAND, the EMI ANNIE
GET YOUR GUN with Kim Criswell, and Von Stade's lovely Rodgers and Hart
album.  But by all means start with SHOW BOAT, and avoid that SOUTH
PACIFIC like the plague!  :-)

And have fun.

Jon Alan Conrad
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical