969 stories by "Michael Portantiere"
Original London Cast, 1930 (Columbia/Pearl) One of the quintessential musicals of the 1920s, Rio Rita was also a bit of an oddity, poised as it was on the brink between musical comedy and op…
Original Broadway Cast, 1984 (Polygram/JAY) For Broadway diva lovers, it's the Fight of the Century. In this corner: Chita Rivera as Anna, a feisty, middle-aged widow who's about to walk out…
Original Broadway Cast, 1976 (RCA) No stars; not recommended. This late-career Richard Rodgers flop, about the marital problems of Henry VIII, revealed the composer to be out of touch with c…
Original Broadway Cast, 1996 (Dreamworks, 2CDs) Rent is a heartbreaking work in more than one sense. First, it's a moving reimagination of La Bohème as a portrait of struggling artists on N…
Original Los Angeles Cast, 1999 (Madness Records) Musicals don't come any sillier than the Kevin Murphy (lyrics-book) and Dan Studney (music-book) adaptation of Reefer Madness. This wacky sh…
Ethel Merman With Studio Artists, 1936 (Liberty/AEI) {usr=4] Hoping for another Anything Goes, producer Vinton Freedley put Cole Porter and Ethel Merman together again, this time adding Jimm…
Original Broadway Cast, 1959 (RCA/Fynsworth Alley) With a book by Herbert and Dorothy Fields, Sidney Sheldon, and David Shaw, music by Albert Hague, and lyrics by Dorothy Fields, Redhead is …
"Songs from Ragtime," 1996 (RCA) One of the most precious gems of the American musical theater, Ragtime is replete with beautiful performances on this first recording of the magnificent scor…
Original Broadway Cast Members, 1986 (Sony) High on the list of flops that deserved better is this four-performance heartbreaker by composer Charles Strouse and lyricist Stephen Schwartz. Th…
Original Cast, 1995 (Varèse Sarabande) In this comedic concept musical by Mike Craver and Mark Hardwick, we're supposed to be hearing a radio broadcast emanating illegally from the home of …
Original Broadway Cast, 1973 (Columbia/Sony) Despite its healthy Broadway run and its Tony Award for Best Musical, Raisin is almost completely forgotten. Fortunately, the Robert Nemiroff-Cha…
Off-Broadway Cast, 1993 (RCA) There have been tons of Stephen Sondheim revues, but the big attraction of Putting It Together was unique: Julie Andrews singing Sondheim, live, in a tiny theat…
Original Broadway Cast, 1970 (Ampex/RCA) With music by Gary Geld and lyrics by Peter Udell, this show is based on the play Purlie Victorious by Ossie Davis, who adapted the musical in collab…
Original Cast, 1982 (Columbia/Sony) An unexpected delight when it opened, this revue of countryish songs doesn't have much in the way of a story line. The setup of a roadside stop populated …
Original Broadway Cast, 1968 (United Artists/MGM/Kritzerland) Based on the film The Apartment, this show was the only Broadway effort of pop songwriters Burt Bacharach (music) and Hal David …
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 1969 (RCA) ]usr=1] Two prisoners identified as "105" and "106" escape from jail and wander through various settings, including a park, a banquet, and a battlefiel…
Original Broadway Cast, 2001 (Sony) Here is Mel Brooks' full-blown musical version of his semi-musical 1968 movie about a has-been Broadway producer's backfired scheme to bilk his show's inv…
Original Off-Broadway Cast, 2002 (JAY) Based on Mark Twain's novel about a pair of 16th-century London lookalikes who swap identities, this adaptation of The Prince and the Pauper played a r…
Original Australian Cast, 2000 (Prodigal Son Productions) Australian librettist-lyricist Dean Bryant and composer Matthew Frank took inspiration from the Bible for their musical Prodigal Son…
Original Cast, 1971 (Original Cast Records/Varèse Sarabande) A woman who lives in the Deep South wants to repent for her husband's deplorable hostilities toward minorities " so she beds bla…
Original Broadway Cast Members, 1940/1942 (Decca) Porgy and Bess may be the most fabulous failure in musical theater history, although it can only be judged a failure in that its original 19…
Original Broadway Cast, 1997 (Varèse Sarabande) Play On! was at least the fourth musical adapted from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night to play, albeit briefly, in New York. This version moved th…
Original Broadway Cast, 1955 (Capitol/DRG) Listening to a second-rank score, a longtime musical theater lover will marvel at how often just-above-par tuners were a dependable source for Hit …
Original Broadway Cast, 1972 (Motown/Decca) Stephen Schwartz wrote the score for this hippy-dippy medieval musical. John Rubinstein starred as the son of Charlemagne, roaming the Holy Roman …
Original Broadway Cast, 1955 (RCA) Rodgers and Hammerstein may not have been the ideal team to put the chippies and layabouts of John Steinbeck's Cannery Row onstage in a musical; it's tanta…
