Word: blitzstein
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Marc Blitzstein's musical The Cradle Will Rock after all these years has been equaled only by Carousel, The Golden Apple, West Side Story and perhaps one or two others. It is enjoying a buoyant resurrection (at Theatre Four) under the direction of Howard Da Silva, who was in the original production and has been associated with every one of its revivals since. As on that notorious and scandalous opening night in 1938, only a piano is used. No orchestra is really needed; the work's that good. And if you haven't seen Tom Jones' and Harvey Schmidt...
Died. Marc Blitzstein, 58, satiric composer who jolted even the class-conscious '30s with his pro-labor operetta, The Cradle Will Rock, mellowed slightly after the war (he renounced Communism in 1949, the year his opera Regina appeared), but kept a spare set of sharks' teeth pearly white, dear, for the English adaptation of Brecht's Threepenny Opera, which ran six years off-Broadway, made a jukebox gigolo of Mack the Knife; in Fort-de-France, Martinique, where police charged three sailors with beating him to death...
...production's theatrical weakness, not its financial failure, is the real shame. Anne Bancroft contributes a valiant performance, and Eric Bentley's revised translation is more smooth and idiomatic than his previous efforts (while avoiding the Runyanesque inaccuracy of Blitzstein's Threepenny Opera). The least known of Brecht's musical collaborators, Paul Dessau, successfully broadens the tradition of Weill, Hindemith and Eisler. Unfortunately, the modified orchestra blares his tunes over Miss Bancroft's not-brassy-enough voice...
...same year, Roy Harris joined la boulangerie. From Harvard, in a later generation, came Irving Fine, Harold Shapero, and Arthur Berger. Elliott Carter, Marc Blitzstein, Bernard Rogers, Roger Goeb, David Diamond, Ross Lee Finney, Howard Swanson, Easley Blackwood--all composed under her tutelage. Among the Europeans she taught were Igor Markevitch, Jean Francaix, Antoni Szalowski, and Darius Milhaud...
...study of narcotics and nihilists; The Zoo Story, another Albee commentary, wedded to Samuel Beckett's monologue, Krapp's Last Tape; In the Jungle of Cities, Bertolt Brecht's intriguing early effort; Hedda Gabler, an excellent production of the Ibsen classic; and the durable Brecht-Weill-Blitzstein classic, The Threepenny Opera...