Jerome David Kern was an American composer of musical theatre and popular music. One of the most important American theatre composers of the early 20th century, he wrote more than 700 songs, used in over 100 stage works, including such classics as "Ol' Man River", "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man", "A Fine Romance", "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", "The Song Is You", "All the Things You Are", "The Way You Look Tonight" and "Long Ago ". He collaborated with many of the leading librettists and lyricists of his era, including George Grossmith Jr., Guy Bolton, P. G. Wodehouse, Otto Harbach, Oscar Hammerstein II, Dorothy Fields, Johnny Mercer, Ira Gershwin and Yip Harburg.
Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein II was an American lyricist, librettist, theatrical producer, and director in musical theater for nearly 40 years. He won eight Tony Awards and two Academy Awards for Best Original Song. Many of his songs are standard repertoire for vocalists and jazz musicians. He co-wrote 850 songs.
Richard Charles Rodgers was an American composer who worked primarily in musical theater. With 43 Broadway musicals and over 900 songs to his credit, Rodgers was one of the most well-known American composers of the 20th century, and his compositions had a significant influence on popular music.
Otto Abels Harbach, born Otto Abels Hauerbach was an American lyricist and librettist of nearly 50 musical comedies and operettas. Harbach collaborated as lyricist or librettist with many of the leading Broadway composers of the early 20th century, including Jerome Kern, Louis Hirsch, Herbert Stothart, Vincent Youmans, George Gershwin, and Sigmund Romberg. Harbach believed that music, lyrics, and story should be closely connected, and, as Oscar Hammerstein II's mentor, he encouraged Hammerstein to write musicals in this manner. Harbach is considered one of the first great Broadway lyricists, and he helped raise the status of the lyricist in an age more concerned with music, spectacle, and stars. Some of his more famous lyrics are "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", "Indian Love Call" and "Cuddle up a Little Closer, Lovey Mine".
This is a list of notable events in music that took place in the year 1928.
This is a list of notable events in music that took place in the year 1924.
Rodgers and Hammerstein was a theater-writing team of composer Richard Rodgers (1902–1979) and lyricist-dramatist Oscar Hammerstein II (1895–1960), who together created a series of innovative and influential American musicals. Their popular Broadway productions in the 1940s and 1950s initiated what is considered the "golden age" of musical theater. Five of their Broadway shows, Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I and The Sound of Music, were outstanding successes, as was the television broadcast of Cinderella (1957). Of the other four shows that the team produced on Broadway during their lifetimes, Flower Drum Song was well-received, and none was an outright flop. Most of their shows have received frequent revivals around the world, both professional and amateur. Among the many accolades their shows garnered were 34 Tony Awards, fifteen Academy Awards, two Pulitzer Prizes and two Grammy Awards.
Sigmund Romberg was a Hungarian-born American composer. He is best known for his musicals and operettas, particularly The Student Prince (1924), The Desert Song (1926) and The New Moon (1928).
Charles Rudolf Friml was a Czech-born composer of operettas, musicals, songs and piano pieces, as well as a pianist. After musical training and a brief performing career in his native Prague, Friml moved to the United States, where he became a composer. His best-known works are Rose-Marie and The Vagabond King, each of which enjoyed success on Broadway and in London and were adapted for film.
The Desert Song is an operetta with music by Sigmund Romberg and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, Otto Harbach and Frank Mandel. It was inspired by the 1925 uprising of the Riffs, a group of Berber fighters, against French colonial rule in Morocco. It was also inspired by stories of Lawrence of Arabia aiding native guerrillas. Many tales romanticizing Saharan North Africa were in vogue, including Beau Geste and The Son of the Sheik.
The New Moon is an operetta with music by Sigmund Romberg and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, Frank Mandel, and Laurence Schwab. The show was the third in a string of Broadway hits for Romberg written in the style of Viennese operetta. Set in 1792, shortly before the French Revolution, the story centers on a young French aristocrat in disguise, who has fled his country and falls in love with the daughter of a prominent New Orleans planter.
Rose-Marie is an operetta-style musical with music by Rudolf Friml and Herbert Stothart, and book and lyrics by Otto Harbach and Oscar Hammerstein II. The story is set in the Canadian Rocky Mountains and concerns Rose-Marie La Flemme, a French Canadian girl who loves miner Jim Kenyon. When Jim falls under suspicion for murder, her brother Emile plans for Rose-Marie to marry Edward Hawley, a city man.
Sally is a musical comedy with music by Jerome Kern, lyrics by Clifford Grey and book by Guy Bolton, with additional lyrics by Buddy De Sylva, Anne Caldwell and P. G. Wodehouse. The plot hinges on a mistaken identity: Sally, a waif, is a dishwasher at the Alley Inn in New York City. She poses as a famous foreign ballerina and rises to fame through joining the Ziegfeld Follies. There is a rags to riches story, a ballet as a centrepiece, and a wedding as a finale. "Look for the Silver Lining" continues to be one of Kern's most familiar songs. The song is lampooned by another song, "Look for a Sky of Blue," in Rick Besoyan's satirical 1959 musical Little Mary Sunshine.
Deep in My Heart is a 1954 American MGM biographical musical film about the life of operetta composer Sigmund Romberg, who wrote the music for The Student Prince, The Desert Song, and The New Moon, among others. Leonard Spigelgass adapted the film from Elliott Arnold's 1949 biography of the same name. Roger Edens produced, Stanley Donen directed and Eugene Loring choreographed. José Ferrer played Romberg, with support from soprano Helen Traubel as a fictional character and Merle Oberon as actress, playwright, librettist, producer, and director Dorothy Donnelly.
Sunny is a musical with music by Jerome Kern and a libretto by Oscar Hammerstein II and Otto Harbach. The plot involves Sunny, the star of a circus act, who falls for a rich playboy but comes in conflict with his snooty family. This show was the follow-up to the 1920 hit musical Sally, both starring Marilyn Miller in the title roles, and it was Kern's first musical together with Hammerstein. Sunny also became a hit, with its original Broadway production in 1925 running for 517 performances. The London production starred Binnie Hale.
The Firefly was the first operetta written by composer Rudolf Friml, with a libretto by Otto Harbach. The story concerns a young Italian girl, who is a street singer in New York. She disguises herself and serves as a cabin boy on a ship to Bermuda, where she falls in love. Complications arise, and eventually, she becomes a grand opera diva.
The Los Angeles Civic Light Opera (LACLO) was an American theatre/opera company in Los Angeles, California. Founded under the motto "Light Opera in the Grand Opera manner" in 1938 by impresario Edwin Lester, the organization presented fifty seasons of theatre before closing due to financial reasons in 1987. Typically the LACLO presented four to six productions during an annual season. The company produced or co-produced several of their own shows in addition to bringing in shows from Broadway to California, often with their original casts. Productions that originated at the LACLO and then went on to wider success, included Song of Norway (1944), Magdalena (1948), Kismet (1953), Peter Pan (1954) and Gigi (1973). Initially the organization mainly presented American operettas, but by the 1960s the company was presenting mostly musical theatre; although the company never completely left its roots.
New Moon is a 1930 black-and-white American, pre-Code romantic/drama/melodrama musical film version of the operetta The New Moon, with music by Sigmund Romberg and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and others. The original stage version premiered on Broadway in 1928. The 1930 film is also known as Komissa Strogoff in Greece, Nymånen in Denmark and Passione cosacca in Italy. A second adaptation, also titled New Moon, was released in 1940.
Helena Bliss was an American actress and singer. A talented soprano, she actively performed in musicals, operettas, and operas in the United States, both on stage and on television and radio, from the 1930s through the 1950s. She is best known for her portrayal of Nina Hagerup in the original Broadway production of Robert Wright and George Forrest's Song of Norway. She also appeared successfully in a few productions on London's West End.
Operetta for the Theatre Organ is an album released by Leonard MacClain in 1957 on Epic Records LP record LN 3372. On release, J. Albert Fracht reviewed the album as "full of good playing." The album features music from Victor Herbert's "Red Mill", "The Fortune Teller" and "Mlle Modiste." Also featured are songs from Sigmund Romberg's "The Desert Song" and "The New Moon". Rudolf Friml is represented by songs from "The Firefly", and "Rose Marie".
