When tracking down that last video I posted of the wonderful Theodore Bikel, recreating the “To Life” number, complete with dialogue in Yiddish, with Fyvush Finkle who did Fiddler on the Roof with him years earlier, I also came across this. It’s Bikel at a concert or some event, recreating “If I Were a Rich Man.” Two things stand out in his rendition. The first is that he performs it faster than most. (Whether that’s how he did it in the show or not, I don’t know.) And the other is that he sings it looking up, not out to the audience like most other do. And eventually I realized that it’s because, in the context of the song – which begins with him saying, "Dear God. You made many, many poor people. I realize, of course, that it’s not shame to be poor. But it’s no great honor, either. So, what would have been so terrible if I had a small fortune.” And so, Bikel makes the very interesting choice to sing the entire song looking up at God. It’s very good.
0 Comments
In 1995, Jacques D’Amboise received the Kennedy Center Honor. D’Amboise was a ballet dancer and choreographer, and I suspect is not extremely well-known today. But then most ballet dancers aren’t as well-known as movie stars and singers even at their height. But I post this for two reasons – but one above all. It’s because the first number of the tribute is a superbly choreographed and fun dance to the tune of Cole Porter’s “Let’s Misbehave”. Oddly, the video cuts out Walter Cronkite’s introduction of the performers, which is a huge shame, since the two of them are his children, Charlotte and Christopher D’Amboise. Christopher has had a successful career as a dancer, choreographer and director, and Charlotte is a highly-accomplished dancer and actress who’s received two Tony nominations on Broadway. (In fact, I’ve posted a glorious video of her in the Kennedy Center Honors tribute to Mary Martin, where she recreated the number she was then-performing in the revue Bob Fosse’s Broadway, superbly singing and soaring in “I’m Flying” from Peter Pan.) The two siblings are absolutely great in the number, but the best part is whenever the camera cuts back to their father -- with the biggest beaming smile you can imagine. Let me put it this way, I don’t particularly like dancing…and I absolutely love this. It’s great. And it’s topped by the glow from the father watching them honor him. Very nice as this full video is, this number and that reaction alone are the reason I’m posting this. But I do also like the finale number in the segment – which is a lot of fun for a reason you’ll discover – but I specifically like it, too, because it’s sung by a performer I like a great deal, Judy Kuhn. Okay, as a bonus, here's the performance I referred to above, the re-creation of the “I’m Flying” number from Peter Pan with Charlotte D'Amboise. Notable for me is that they do the full number, which includes my favorite part, the great (and rarely seen) Flying Ballet at the end, which I dearly love. And you'll note the reaction from the audience here -- and these are all sophisticate adults in tuxedos and ball gowns, not a child in sight. And above all that, as great as Charlotte D'Amboise is here -- can you imagine the pressure (and joy) of her performing this in front of Mary Martin?! UPDATE: And something I never noticed before, for all the many times I've watched this, but did finally after having posted this: at the very end, a moment before the video cuts off, you'll see applauding her and joyously beaming in the audience, a man at the 5:17 mark wearing glasses -- her father, Jacques D'Amboise. Continuing our gaggle of lesser-known love songs, we now have a fun song, "Love is the Reason" from the 1951 musical A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, with a score by Arthur Schwartz and the wonderful Dorothy Fields. It's performed by the also-wonderful Shirley Booth. And we'll add in another song, the comedy number "I Love You," this from Little Me, a show that got 10 Tony nominations in 1962, including one for Sid Caesar as Best Actor who played eight different roles in the show and sings the number here, along with Virginia Martin. The score is by Cy Coleman and lyricist Carolyn Leigh (who wrote several of the lyrics in Peter Pan). Not only is today when pitchers and catchers report for Spring Training in baseball, but it's also Valentines Day -- which seems wonderfully appropriate. Once again, we offer up a bouquet of lesser-known love songs and even some comedy just for the occasion. To start off, here are two of the most beautiful that I know -- but particularly from musicals, which has more than its share of love songs. This first is probably my favorite of the two, "When Did I Fall in Love?" from Fiorello! with a score by Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock, which won both the Pulitzer Prize and also Tony Award for Best Musical (tying, of all things, that year with The Sound of Music). It's sung here by Ellen Hanley. What I most admire about the song is the simplicity of the words, almost conversational, yet that bring out rich emotion. Usually when I've posted this in the past, I've used the Original Cast Recording, which is wonderful. But I just found a new version which is terrific. As it happens, it's from a live production of the musical, done in 2013 at the New York City Center Encores!, which annually has put on pared-down productions for brief runs of lesser-known, deserving shows. (Fiorello! was the first revival they ever presented -- and became the first they ever repeated for their 10th anniversary.) It's performed here by Kate Baldwin, who knows a thing or two about how to sing Harnick, having released an album of his songs. She soars here. The other, a very close runner-up, is "I Know Now" from the 1964 British musical Robert & Elizabeth, about the poets Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. In many ways, this is the opposite of "When Did I Fall in Love?", being very poetic (befitting its two main characters) and lush. The show had a score by Ron Grainer and Ronald Millar. It's performed by Keith Michell and June Bronhill. The treat here is that they recreated the number seven years later for a 1971 television special, so we have video of it. By the way, some may recognize Keith Michell's name. He most-famously played the lead in the PBS Masterpiece Theatre mini-series, The Six Wives of Henry VIII. And also had a recurring role as insurance investigator (and former jewel thief) 'Dennis Stanton' on Murder, She Wrote. He also had the lead in the London West End production of Man of La Mancha. June Bronhill was an Australian opera singer who also performed in several musicals, including as 'Maria' in the original Australian production of The Sound of Music. Okay, as a bonus, here's another love song from Robert & Elizabeth sung by the pair. Not precisely a comic number, but a lively fun one -- with a couple of among my favorite rhymes in any song -- as Robert explains to the overly-protected Elizabeth that he's deeply in love with her, which she tries to put off, knowing that her authoritarian father would never permit it. Not long ago, I posted a video here of Theodore Bikel and Fyvush Finkel (from Picket Fences and Boston Public) recreating the “To Life” number from when they toured in Fiddler on the Roof many years earlier. After posting that, I did some more searching, and found this gem. It may seem like the same thing, but it’s very different. And wonderfully so. So, I offer it as a bonus. This is the two of them five years later (at which point Bikel was then 84 and Finkel was 86) at a gala event for the famed Yiddish Theatre Folksbienne in New York. This is the wonderful theater that recently did an all-Yiddish production of Fiddler on the Roof to great acclaim. (And did the first New York production of the Barry Manilow-Bruce Sussman musical Harmony, before it transferred to Broadway.) In this video, Bikel and Finkel not only sing “To Life” again – but this time, they perform the entire scene (with dialogue), sort of in costume. But even more notable, they do it all --–in Yiddish! (Don't worry, there are subtitles.) It’s absolutely wonderful. As a reminder, this is the scene when the butcher Lazar Wolf is asking Tevye to marry his daughter -- and at first Tevye, a dairyman, thinks he's been invited there because Lazar Wolf wants to buy one of his milk cows. Finishing our trilogy of Theodore Bikel repeats, this is a piece I posted almost 10 years ago with Bikel and Fyvush Finkel (who most people know from Picket Fences and Boston Public) recreating the song "To Life" from when they toured in the musical Fiddler on the Roof. When Theo Met Fyvush After finding that video of Theodore Bikel which I posted the other day, with him re-creating his performance as Captain Von Trapp in the original production of The Sound of Music, I noticed another video that, in some ways, does the same thing for another show. Among his many performances, Bikel played Tevye in several road productions of Fiddler on the Roof. And again, like before, there's no video of those shows. But here in a concert from 2003, he not only sings one of the songs, but brings on stage a wonderful actor who co-starred with him in the show all those many decades ago, the joyous Fyvush Finkel, who you might recall from both Picket Fences and Boston Public. (And who got his start in the Yiddish Theater, a reality that still shows up through this video...) When they toured together in Fiddler on the Roof, Finkel played the role of Lazar Wolf, the butcher, who asks Teyve for his daugther Tzeitel's hand in marriage, which leads to the rousing production number, "To Life, L'Chaim." In this performance, Finkel is an exuberant 81 (and still alive at 92...), and Bikel here is 79 (still going on today at 90.) You might want to jump to the 36 second mark, since there's just blank leader at the beginning. By the way, I mentioned in reply to my earlier video that I had reason to meet Theodore Bikel once. He's good friends with a friend of mine, the writer-director Lynn Roth. We were all at a Writers Guild event so I went over to join them. It was a very personable conversation, and I remember bringing up that I had an earlier album of his, where he sang pop-rock songs with a folk interpretation (it's very good) -- and also seeing him on the Mike Douglas Show many years before. What was interesting and memorable about that TV appearance is he had mentioned that the then-current hit song, "Those Were the Days," sung by Mary Hopkin, was actually an old Russian folk song, which he had introduced into America many years earlier, and he performed the original Russian version on the show, which was wonderful. He was bowled over that I'd remembered that broadcast from such a long time earlier ("That was over 20 years ago!" he said) -- and that I had that obscure album) -- which helped make the rest of the conversation all the better. Later, Lynn called me up and said, "You have no idea how touched Theo was that you actually remembered that TV appearance and had his album." Here's more of him, with another great performer. (Note: there's about 35 second of black tape at the beginning.) |
AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
Categories
All
|
© Copyright Robert J. Elisberg 2024
|