Broadway musicals with foreign languages

In French:

Dites-moi from South Pacific
Chanson from The Baker's Wife (also translated)
La La La from No Strings (charming song, also translated)
Bal Petit Bal from New Faces of '52 (wonderfully sung by Eartha Kitt, also translated)
St. Pierre from The Happy Time

In Dutch:

The Bugle from Here's Love

Updated On: 7/14/13 at 05:31 PM

In The Light in the Piazza, there were some songs/dialogue that you could get the gist of what they were saying through context, expression, gestures, etc. It also helped to immerse you in the same situation the Johnsons found themselves in, trying to communicate in a foreign country, not quite understanding either.

More importantly, it illustrated how a difference in languages could easily mask Clara's "condition", making it seem an opportune situation for the mother to drop Clara into...a place where she might have a shot at happiness/love where they mightn't realize there was something wrong with her.

For this show, it had a specific purpose that, I think, worked. I saw the show a few times with people who are not sophisticated theatre goers. Not a one of them had a problem with it and all understood its place in the show.

So I guess, to answer your question, audiences will tolerate as much as works and makes sense in a particular show.

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The difference between Light in the Piazza and West Side Story is that the writers of Piazza were very careful to make sure that the portions spoken in Italian would still be very clear to the audience, whereas in West Side Story, the translated portions were intended to be sung/spoken in English, so the same caution was not taken with constructing those scenes. Also, in Piazza, the use of foreign language had the great dramatic effect of having the audience feel disconnected from the Italians, allowing us to see Florence the same way Clara and Margaret do. The intention of West Side Story was to do the opposite--to make the Sharks more empathetic--but it backfired, in my opinion, and made them more distanced. West Side Story has always been more in the Jets' favor, but the reason for that is that we spend more time with the Jets, who get the first few scenes and a couple of great songs. Arthur Laurents's idea might have worked better had the majority of the audience been fluent in Spanish, though.

Both RAGS and RAGTIME use a melange of European tongues and particularly Yiddish to introduce the immigrant throngs as they arrive at Ellis Island.

FIORELLO has "The Name's Laguardia", first sung in English and then in Italian, and Yiddish as Fiorello canvases for votes on the Lower East Side. The Eckarts famously designed pinwheel framess carrying the street signage that would rotate from one language to the next.

Growltiger's Last Stand in CATS has a snippet of pastiche Italian opera (In una tepida notte d'estate, allorche la natura...).

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The Matilda kids sound like they're singing in a foreign language.

Part of There She Goes from Fame is not in English

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"The Independence Day Hora" and part of "The Wedding" from Milk and Honey are in Hebrew.

And let's not forget "Bonjour (The Language Song)" from The Unsinkable Molly Brown, which tells us how to say hello in multiple languages.

Wilkommen in Cabaret

There's that really insufferable song "Non Capisco" in DO I HEAR A WALTZ that scatters Italian phrases through the lyrics with their English translations as a language lesson for the maid who's oblivious to an affair the main characters are trying to have. Totally embarrassing attempt of Sondheim's to milk humor out of language misunderstandings. Ugh.

The Thoroughly Modern Milly - The chinese song uses an overhead sign board for the english translation. It also translates the english into chinese characters and everything spoken in chinese is also translated overhead.

E#very song Patti LuPone does she sings in Greek.