king david

Judy Kuhn was great in it.

It was between this and Aida for Disney to produce.

And the winner was...

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Yes, a cast recording exists. It is exceptionally rare.

It's become the holy grail for Original Cast CD collectors. The last time I saw it come up on Ebay, it sold for $227.00.

The other big rarities in OCR CDs ("Whoop-Up," "Mystery of Edwin Drood (the Polydor pressing), the Bernstein "Peter Pan," "Celebration") often fetch big prices. But nothing like KING DAVID.

I suspect it's the combination of Menken and Alice Ripley that makes this one so sought after.

For more info about rare OBC CDs, visit

http://www.castalbums.org/rare.html

There's a picture of the KING DAVID CD on that page.

Updated On: 1/20/05 at 01:46 AM

I figured it would be hard to find, but not as rare as everyone is saying. The CD is quite good with some marvelous, full-throated singing by the entire cast. It is some of Menken's most mature work and finds a good balance between Holy epic and Broadway sounds. The leads are a "who's who" and even though its not a complete recording, you can tell what's going on and get the flavor of the piece. I understand that a production is taking place in TX sometime soon. Good luck in finding it.

I bought this CD as soon as it was released because I'm a big Judy Kuhn fan. As far as I know, the show was commissioned by Disney to open the New Amsterdam. KING DAVID is performed as an oratorio, so there's no real stage production involved. Alice Ripley is thrilling and the closing gives me chills, but what's up with Marcus Lovett? His voice seems really over-emotive. I can barely listen to him at all on WHISTLE DOWN THE WIND. Heck, I can barely listen to WHISTLE DOWN THE WIND at all. There are some lousy choral songs on KING DAVID, but the solos and duets are pretty good.

I thought I remembered reading an article on Playbill about how they were considering making changes to the work and what sort of fixes they planned for a full-blown staging of it in the next few years, but I can't find it... anybody else remember seeing something like this recently??

You might be able to get a used copy.


http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000001M3W/002-5985791-0571265?v=glance

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It's got some of Menken's better songs and some of Rice's better lyrics but much of it is repetitive and uninteresting. It really feels like a middling Lloyd Webber show, overusing themes and putting forth way too much exposition in recitative that just becomes numbing after awhile.

The CD is a good representation of the parts that stood out. Unfortunately the rest of it just made those parts less interesting than they appear on the CD.

It could be retooled and steamlined, there's a lot of good material there. It just don't build to its big shots especially well.

Huh, I checked out the Let 'Em Eat Cake recording listed as rare on the linked site out of my library last week, but I think they would notice if I tried to sell it on eBay, or they at least would notice when it dosen't come back.

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