Word: romberg
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...first three: Johann Strauss's Rosalinda (Die Fledermaus); Sigmund Romberg's The Student Prince; Rudolf Friml's The Vagabond King...
According to legend, the composers of Broadway's musical shows are one-finger pianists who can read music barely, if at all. The legend is exaggerated. If they had a mind to, composers like Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, Sigmund Romberg and Jerome Kern could turn out a musical score complete from piccolo to glockenspiel. In the more leisurely days of Victor Herbert, they would have. But today, the writing of musical comedies, like the manufacture of automobiles, is a production-line job. The composer thinks up the tunes, outlines the continuity, sometimes even writes out a more or less...
Until recently musical circles considered it disgraceful for a composer to hire an orchestrator. In 1933, when Sigmund Romberg took some of the numbers Spialek had orchestrated for his Rose of France to Paris, Romberg copied off Spialek's orchestrations in his own handwriting for fear he would lose face with the French producers. But in show business, as elsewhere, there is a premium on speed and efficiency. And specialists not only orchestrate faster but better than most musicomedy composers. In the U.S. today only German-born Kurt Weill (The Beggar's Opera, Knickerbocker Holiday, Lady...
...surprise comes from Richard Rodgers, who invades the domain which used to be the exclusive property of Jerome Kern and Sigmund Romberg. Instead of his usual racy tomfoolery and querulous laments, Rodgers has turned out a score that would be superb if it didn't sound as if it were from Kern...
Sunny River (book & lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II; music by Sigmund Romberg; produced by Max Gordon) attempts to revive big-scale, full-throated operetta without knowing how. It seizes on the cobwebs of the oldtime musical instead of the charm. Its lush, long-winded plot, its stilted dialogue, its leering humor have everybody's nostalgia in full retreat before the evening is half over. A tale of New Orleans around 1810, Sunny River tells of the rivalry between a cafe singer (Muriel Angelus) and a society belle (Helen Claire) for a dashing young Creole lawyer (Bob Laurence), runs...