Word: hammersteins
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Carmen Jones (music by Georges Bizet; book & lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II; produced by Billy Rose) turns the opera that Sir Thomas Beecham once called "the sturdiest oak in the operatic forest" into the most brilliant show on Broadway. If Bizet's Carmen and the all-Negro Carmen Jones live, artistically, on different sides of the railroad tracks, they nevertheless represent the shortest distance between one exciting kind of job and another. Drastic changes have been made. Carmen has been retired in a kiln, not warmed over in an oven. There is no capricious tinkering for tinkering...
...hint of Spain, no highfalutin of opera, clings to these people. Oscar Hammerstein's lively book uses straight Negro idiom, finds room-and here Carmen Jones strikes out boldly for itself-for a pulsating Negro gaiety. Not into Lillas Pastia's dim tavern, but into a packed and glittering night spot, does Husky Miller make his first royal entrance. Instead of hiding out in a smugglers' den, the Carmen Jones crowd cavort and click their heels at a swanky Negro country club...
...Oscar Hammerstein exhibits considerable ingenuity in transforming the original to a modern setting while still retaining the plot and characters...
Oklahoma! (music by Richard Rodgers; book & lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein, 2d; produced by The Theater Guild) pretty much deserves its exclamation point. A folk musical laid in the Indian territory just after the turn of the century, it is thoroughly refreshing without being oppressively rustic. It boasts no musicomedy names and nothing much in the way of a book. But Composer Rodgers (working for the first time in his Broadway career without Lyricist Lorenz Hart) has turned out one of his most attractive scores, and Choreographer Agnes de Mille (the ballet Rodeo) has created some delightful dances. Even...
...What a Beautiful Mornin' and People Will Say, gay lilt in The Surrey with the Fringe on Top, humor in Pore Jud and I Cain't Say No, a roof-buster of an anthem in Oklahoma! If, compared to Lorenz Hart's at their best, Oscar Hammerstein's lyrics lack polish, so after all did frontier Oklahoma...