Word: librettists
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Diadems & Dunce Caps. Oscar Hammerstein II was almost mythically affluent, with a producer's or librettist's haul from five smash hits: Oklahoma!, Carousel...
Died. Leonard Liebling, 65, longtime editor of the influential Musical Courier, critic and composer, librettist of four comic operas, concert pianist; of heart disease; in Manhattan...
...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...
...humanity into his book-writing than most of his rivals. One reason may be that many of his librettos were discerningly adapted from fairly full-blooded material. Another likely reason: Hammerstein lacks the typical Tin Pan Alley taste and the blatantly Broadway mind. He is ruefully conscious that the librettist is the whipping boy of musicomedy, the first to be blamed for a failure, the last to get credit for a success. In musicomedy, however, the whipping boy's wages are a fair compensation. Hammerstein's current earnings are well over $300,000 a year...