Word: librettist
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Carousel (music by Richard Rodgers; book & lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II; produced by the Theatre Guild). All Oklahoma's horses and all Oklahoma's men have put another charmer together again. But Oklahoma's and Carousel's Composer Rodgers, Librettist Hammerstein, Choreographer Agnes de Mille, Director Rouben Mamoulian, Costume Designer Miles White have not repeated themselves. Carousel strays pretty far from Oklahoma!, just as it shies completely away from Broadway. A reworking of Ferenc Molnar's Liliom, it is not a musicomedy but a lovely and appealing "musical play...
...Librettist Hammerstein has not given Carousel the full flavor of Molnar, at least he has given it all the interest of a true play. His script is always simple, sometimes touching, never flashy, only here & there a little cute. And Composer Rodgers has swathed it in one of his warmest and most velvety scores. More than a succession of tunes, the music helps interpret the story; it has operatic climaxes, choral fullness, choreographic lilt. But it is still in tunes that Composer Rodger's real magic lies-whether the tender If I Loved You, the light, murmurous This...
Oscar Hammerstein II could pretty nearly justify his title of No. 1 U.S. librettist just by pointing to the two best-loved of all modern musicals-Show Boat and Oklahoma! But he has also written the libretto or lyrics (or both) for such hits as Rose Marie, The Desert Song, The New Moon, Carmen Jones; his are the words of 01' Man River, Lover Come Back to Me, Stout-Hearted, Men, Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin' and-the only song he ever wrote for himself and not for a show-The Last Time I Saw Paris...
Smith and De Koven." But Robin Hood's success mounted so fast that The Bostonians alone gave it 4,250 performances, and netted De Koven and his librettist over a million dollars...
...continued studying the piano. Then he toured Europe, Central and South America as a concert pianist. He has since made equally wide but more informal tours with a rumba outfit called Lecuona's Cuban Boys, has also written 30 musical comedies, most of them in collaboration with Cuban Librettist Gustavo Galarraga...