11. A song from the musical which made the most impact on me.
Ah, Finian’s Rainbow!!! It was almost outdated from the moment it first premiered on Broadway on January 10, 1947. The story follows Irish immigrant Finian Lonergan, as he and daughter Sharon arrive in the mythical state of Missitucky, where Finian plans to bury the leprechaun’s pot of gold he stole in the soil near Fort Knox in hopes that its good fortune and cash value will increase. The book by E. Y. Harburg and Fred Saidy satirized every social, political and economic issue of the day. One plot point has a bigoted, Southern white senator turning into a black man to teach him a lesson about racial intolerance. This required the white actor to use heavy charcoal make-up that gave him a black face, which reportedly elicited a collective gasp from audiences even in 1947 since “blackface” had gone out of fashion with the end of minstrel shows and vaudeville.
Perhaps because of this, the show is rarely revived today (the 2009 Broadway revival solved this problem by double casting the role of Senator Rawkins before-and-after with both a white and a black actor). No matter what the deficiencies or out-of-date references of the book, the musical does possess one of the greatest song scores ever written, with music by Burton Lane and lyrics by E. Y. Harburg. The most famous songs are “Old Devil Moon” and “How Are Things in Glocca Morra?” both sung by Sharon, but the ensemble gets to sing and dance in 10 numbers. The music is tough too, with all these discordant jazz harmonies with notes that sound hideous when sung separately but mesh into a glorious sound that is just heavenly.
Finian’s Rainbow had such an impact on me, because, while I had been performing for the entire decade of the 1970s, it was the first show in which I discovered that I wasn’t just a dancer who could belt but a real singer. The song “Necessity” is usually sung by the female sharecroppers, but our production needed to fill the massive music hall stage and added guys into the mix. Since the song was scored in the lower alto range, our musical director wanted a brighter sound and asked me to sing virtually the entire song up the octave, which had me topping out at a D-flat above high-C. Those insane tenor high notes got a great workout for the rest of my performing career. The video clip is from the 2009 revival, with Terri White and female ensemble singing “Necessity.”
- by Jonathan Lewis
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Day 11 Musical Theatre Song Challenge: “Necessity”
11. A song from the musical which made the most impact on me.
Ah, Finian’s Rainbow!!! It was almost outdated from the moment it first premiered on Broadway on January 10, 1947. The story follows Irish immigrant Finian Lonergan, as he and daughter Sharon arrive in the mythical state of Missitucky, where Finian plans to bury the leprechaun’s pot of gold he stole in the soil near Fort Knox in hopes that its good fortune and cash value will increase. The book by E. Y. Harburg and Fred Saidy satirized every social, political and economic issue of the day. One plot point has a bigoted, Southern white senator turning into a black man to teach him a lesson about racial intolerance. This required the white actor to use heavy charcoal make-up that gave him a black face, which reportedly elicited a collective gasp from audiences even in 1947 since “blackface” had gone out of fashion with the end of minstrel shows and vaudeville.
Perhaps because of this, the show is rarely revived today (the 2009 Broadway revival solved this problem by double casting the role of Senator Rawkins before-and-after with both a white and a black actor). No matter what the deficiencies or out-of-date references of the book, the musical does possess one of the greatest song scores ever written, with music by Burton Lane and lyrics by E. Y. Harburg. The most famous songs are “Old Devil Moon” and “How Are Things in Glocca Morra?” both sung by Sharon, but the ensemble gets to sing and dance in 10 numbers. The music is tough too, with all these discordant jazz harmonies with notes that sound hideous when sung separately but mesh into a glorious sound that is just heavenly.
Finian’s Rainbow had such an impact on me, because, while I had been performing for the entire decade of the 1970s, it was the first show in which I discovered that I wasn’t just a dancer who could belt but a real singer. The song “Necessity” is usually sung by the female sharecroppers, but our production needed to fill the massive music hall stage and added guys into the mix. Since the song was scored in the lower alto range, our musical director wanted a brighter sound and asked me to sing virtually the entire song up the octave, which had me topping out at a D-flat above high-C. Those insane tenor high notes got a great workout for the rest of my performing career. The video clip is from the 2009 revival, with Terri White and female ensemble singing “Necessity.”
- by Jonathan Lewis
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment
Feel free to comment. However, please understand that this is my personal blog site so I am entitled to my own opinion. I do not wish to argue every little point with which you may disagree. Just as I have my opinion, you have yours and I respect that two people may never agree on the same point. So please keep it clean and cordial. Thank you.