I'm a new LaChiusa Fan with a question!- Page 2

[BSoBW2]

Posted: 12/18/05 at 1:32am

The libretto is for sale on amazon - and I find it slightly different than the show itself - but nevertheless it is close enough...maybe it was reworked?

It's a show that borders a realistic staging and a more "artsy" staging - fantasy-like...I can't think of the word.

[littleredridinghood]

Posted: 12/18/05 at 1:59am

We read Bernarda Alba this semester in Spanish, and I thought "this would probably be a really good musical/opera..." then like literally the next day, I read the news about him doing it. Aaah, if I can make it at all I will...Lorca is genius and so is LaChiusa!

[BobbyBubby]

Posted: 12/18/05 at 10:54am

Get The WIld Party first. Though I love First Lady Suite, the disc doesn't work for me, for some reason. I loved it off Broadway with Testa, Murney, and all, but the recorded cast isn't as good or exciting.

[Pgenre]

Posted: 12/18/05 at 12:51pm

I wholeheartedly agree with BobbyBubby in re: FIRST LADY SUITE. It is my least favorite of LaChiusa's scores (recorded and not), and is the most "difficult" to get into. Don't get me wrong, its brilliant and astounding but just not my personal cup of tea. It IS a shame that the Off-Broadway production wasn't recorded, but I believe the excellent response of the LA Production (which is the recorded show) is what prompted the Off-Broadway revival production, so, for that, I am grateful.

LITTLE FISH must be recorded, AND SOON! It is LaChiusa's most contemporary score and I would do anything for an OOBCR of it.

THE PETRIFIED PRINCE had some fabulous songs, but the concept/direction/book were confused which is why it dissappeared so quickly (and completely, it seems).

LOVERS & FRIENDS: CHATAQUA VARIATIONS is a brilliant score, but one must remember it is an OPERA, so it is much different than his other scores in that respect. I would expect a recording to come about someday soon.

I have never seen nor heard AGNES/BREAK/EULOGY or THE HIGHEST YELLOW (yet) so I cannot comment on those.

I am so pleased to see such positive responses to this oftentimes maligned genius... the "other" board is much, much more negative in all things LaChiusa. A Real Shame. Makes me appreciate this board even more.

A Good Nightmare Comes So Rarely,
P genre

[justpeachy]

Posted: 12/18/05 at 1:19pm

This is a really helpful thread. I saw See What I Wanna See (twice actually), and fell in love with it. I'm hoping to hear/see much more of LaChiusa's work, and now I have a better idea of where I should start.

[BobbyBubby]

Posted: 12/18/05 at 1:24pm

Hello Again and Wild Party are must haves, in any collection.

[roquat]

Posted: 12/18/05 at 2:05pm

I worked on "First Lady Suite." It's uneven, but has moments of unparalelled brilliance, especially in the Eleanor Roosevelt section (which is about the controversial, much-talked-about, possibly romatic relationship between Eleanor Roosevelt and her lesbian secretary, Lorena Hickok.) LaChuisa has the boldness to musicalize a fragment of an actual letter Eleanor wrote to "Hick", and it's breathtaking. This whole piece has an original, fascinating perspective on the role of the First Lady.

I have to take issue, however, with the poster who said LaChuisa has "surpassed" Sondheim. He doesn't have the wit or the playfulness (and he's even more anti-melodic, which eventually gets tiresome, for me at least.)

[ashley0139]

Posted: 12/18/05 at 2:30pm

I am also a new LaChiusa fan. I saw See What I Wanna See in November, and can't get his music out of my head. It is gorgeous. I am definetly looking into more of his stuff. I can't wait to get SWIWS and Wild Party.

[Ourtime992]

Posted: 12/18/05 at 5:54pm

Big LaChiusa fan here. I love his devotion to his craft and his steadfastness in maintaining his own voice, even though it repeatedly drives him to financial ruin. What I appreciate just as much, though, is that he writes ALL THE TIME. Considering his first major New York staging was just over a decade ago, his body of work is astounding. And it is uniformly pretty good, with some of it just amazing.

You know that my faith in reviving and reinventing the American musical still rests with Adam Guettel, but if he doesn't get off his butt and start writing more quickly, there will be nothing to show for all that talent. LaChiusa, on the other hand, stands to make a number of sizeable contributions to the theater by virtue of his prolific work style.

[jasonf]

Posted: 12/18/05 at 6:42pm

I hate to say this on this thread - but to say LaChiusa is the "future of musical theater" to the exclusion of the likes of Jason Robert Brown, Adam Guettel, Andrew Lippa, Laurence O'Keefe, and David Yazbeck is to basically doom the genre we all love.

Though I AM a fan of LaChiusa (especially Marie Christine and Wild Party), his shows ARE difficult. The average theater goer isn't going to get them any more than they did/do Sondheim. So yes, LaChiusa may be the rising star we hold on a pedestal to show off what the genre is capable of, but to ignore the others who are talented and whose shows ARE more accessible is to further isolate us from the mainstream, thereby making the art form non-commercial and therefore impossible to be made.

Don't get me wrong - I hope LaChiusa has a long and wonderful career -- I'll buy every cast recording of every show he writes -- but let's not overdo it...

[Roninjoey]

Posted: 12/18/05 at 6:43pm

Shush, ourtime. We're not allowed to complain about how long it takes Adam Guettel to get a show out. I can practically hear the villagers coming to flame us now.

I don't think Adam Guettel has done anything to reinvent the musical theater. Myths and Hymns to me is more of a song cycle, Floyd Collins fits pretty neatly into the genre (although it is, musically, one of the most unique musicals, along with Myths and Hymns), as does Light in the Piazza. Whereas I think LaChiusa is really adventurous in what he does, theatrically. I don't dig his music as much as I do Guettel's, but I think LaChiusa is the more ambitious writer all around. Of course Guettel is mainly a musician/singer/actor, whereas LaChiusa is a playwright.

He is incredibly prolific, but then again this is his living. Guettel's a little rich boy ;P

Guettel has it pretty easy I think. LaChiusa is really ambitious, and as such he provides wickedly divisive work (some people love him, some hate him, some find him pretentious, some moving, etc...).

And really, Sondheim has said he wouldn't mind having a hit, so it's not like you can knock Guettel for not being experimental like LaChiusa is. You write what you want to write.

PS, I don't think the musical theater needs reviving. I think it's been revived! I wish Guettel was more prolific though Well, we have the next few Lachiusa shows to look forward to next year!

[Ourtime992]

Posted: 12/20/05 at 6:12pm

To be fair to Adam Guettel, I would hardly say he sold out with The Light in the Piazza. The story he chose was fairly straightforward, and he wrote a narrative musical, but he provided an intricate, challenging score. My family, all theatre lovers, can't quite grasp what the score is trying to be/say/do, though they loved the show "with or without the music." Even when Piazza was prepping for New York, all the talk was that Lincoln Center would be lucky to fill the Vivian Beaumont for its limited run, so financial expectations were not high. And before that, he may have been a critical darling, but all he had to show for it was a workshopped show (Floyd Collins) and a concert (Saturn Returns) to his credit. He has said time and time again that his only desire is "to entertain." That having been said, he's hardly following in the footsteps of Jerry Herman!

I don't see Guettel's contribution being the reinvention of the musical, per se, despite what I said above. I see his contribution being the perfection, if there is such a thing, of a musical. I think he will be remembered for writing a seminal work that is someday considered among the best, along with works like Sweeney Todd and Gypsy. And in the commercial atmosphere of the theater today, I think that is reviving something. I think Piazza has already laid the groundwork for that achievement. It's creating trust in serious, artsy shows, which will hopefully lead to more of them.

Back to LaChiusa...I do agree that he's pushing the genre more than any of his contemporaries. Reinvention is probably not the right word -- I doubt he'd use it to describe his work -- maybe extension is better. He's taking theatre places it hasn't quite gone before. He's actively experimenting with the structure and style of the musical (and never just to be gimmicky *cough* JRB *cough*), not to mention playing with different parts of his own voice.

My wife will sometimes ask "is this a LaChiusa show?" and the only things that tip her off are the driving rhythms and "sassiness" (I'd say sexiness) present in his works. Other than that, his body of work already encompasses such varied subject matter that it's hard to describe his "type" of show at all.

So, that having been said, go out and buy the recordings of ALL of his shows. Each will challenge you to think about the theatre in a different way, because each challenges you to think about yourself and about humanity in a different way.

[Roninjoey]

Posted: 12/20/05 at 7:57pm

Well put (although I wasn't accusing Guettel of selling out).

I don't understand why people find Piazza so difficult. I think Margaret's part is very layered and as such there's a lot to come back to and discover, but all the same many of the songs are tuneful enough. They're not "Hello, Dolly" (da dah, dah dah dah dah dah, dah dah) but "Love to Me," "Dividing Day," "Passegiatta," the title song, etc... I dunno. The lyrics are kind of dense and poetical and much of it is in italian, which is hard.

[Jazzysuite82]

Posted: 12/20/05 at 9:34pm

The answer is what I call Angular harmonies. If you look at LaChiusa, Brown, and Guettel they've all been told that their pieces are hard to get. It's foolish to say. Now why are they hard to get. Subject matter? Maybe but not entirely because other musicals that are dark in nature are heard and produced. IF you take these three composers and have their melodies isolated, sure they're different but not that "anti-melodious". It's how they're set. The harmonies used in the accompinament that make people stop listen. People are so used to pop music that all they want to hear in a musical is a I-IV-V chord progressions without much musicality. Piazza is actually VERY melodic as is The Wild Party. I'm not sure why people say there's no melody (which is an imposibility when it comes to singing musical theatre). I think people don't hear what they expect or want to hear and assume that it's not there because they didn't hear it. In reality they heard it, they just didn't recognize it. Which means they're not really listening. It's a problem with audience today.

PS Musical Theatre isn't dead.

[Roninjoey]

Posted: 12/20/05 at 11:59pm

It makes me wonder why the music from Wicked is so popular. The melodies are all over the place. Although I suppose they aren't particularly complicated.

Oh wait, screaming girls. I remember now.

Really, I think people are simply resistant. If ever they open their minds up to it, they'll suddenly find themselves really enjoying it. Unconventional music, that it is.

There's an atonal song in Piazza but that hardly means the entire score is atonal. People are too quick to throw words/phrases like atonality and/or dissonant music around.

[Jazzysuite82]

Posted: 12/21/05 at 12:20am

Yeah actually early on the musical definition of Dissonant was anything not the tonic, fourth or fifth. Lots of popular music is dissonant. I think it's a different kind of dissonance that these composers are playing with. They have a new sound for broadway and that's scary for people who grew up with Rodgers and Hammerstein and Lerner and Lowe. The baby-boomers want a nostalgic fix.

[freeadmission]

Posted: 12/21/05 at 12:44am

"The harmonies used in the accompinament that make people stop listen. People are so used to pop music that all they want to hear in a musical is a I-IV-V chord progressions without much musicality. Piazza is actually VERY melodic as is The Wild Party. I'm not sure why people say there's no melody (which is an imposibility when it comes to singing musical theatre). I think people don't hear what they expect or want to hear and assume that it's not there because they didn't hear it. In reality they heard it, they just didn't recognize it. Which means they're not really listening. It's a problem with audience today."

I think you just hit on something. I had my mom listent to Piazza because it seemed like something she'd like -- it almost has a classical sound. Anyway, we were listening to "Fable" (my personal fave) and she mentioned that she didn't like how the music was "all over the place" and how it "didn't fit with what she's singing". I told her that it was accompaniment, not and accompanying melody, but she didn't seem to get what I was saying.

What you mentioned about the I-IV-V bit seems to make sense here. I don't know all that much about music theory (I've only taken one course), so I wouldn't really be able to say, "Oh, that's the dominant there," but I can recognize the usual progression and I can recognize the "unusual" progressions. And it's the "unusual" ones that get me excited.

[Roninjoey]

Posted: 12/21/05 at 12:51am

I think the music takes a much more active role in telling the emotions of the character now. A little wrong note to make a dramatic point, the music taking off in schizophrenic directions (to some ears at least). No longer does a character sing about the same thing for three minutes. Although I love a good little song too.

[Sumofallthings]

Posted: 12/21/05 at 7:19am

May I just say that LaChiusa is also not an infallible lyricist. I find one of his lyrics in Marie Christine to be among the most awkward and expository I've ever heard. Really it's just plain silly:

"Night into Day
Into Night
Into Day"

Oh I get it! You mean a black woman and a white man are having sex? Thanks Michael that lyric really gave me a good metaphor to equate the situation too!

[Jazzysuite82]

Posted: 12/21/05 at 11:53am

I always read that lyric as a time reference meaning they have sex every night, all night. When he's with her, time just vanishes. I mean the lyric says Night into Day into night, into day. For the lyric to be interpreted the way you say wouldn't it have to be Day into night into day into night? I mean Marie is the darker one but she can't exactly enter Dante's day if you know what I mean. I don't think Strap-ons were around yet. Even if they were, I don't think Dante would have been into that.

Also I mean no lyricist is infallible, not even Sondheim. If the best isn't infallible then you know the rest of us are gonna do some sketchy things. It's humanity to be fallible I think. Lyric writing is sooo hard, especially for the theatre. When you try to write your own, Night into day into night into day doesn't sound so bad anymore.
Updated On: 12/21/05 at 11:53 AM