CDs: Berlin-Weill Double Feature

Taking leads in last week's reading of the John Kander-Fred Ebb-Joseph Stein Skin of Our Teeth musical: Dee Hoty, Clarke Peters, Michele Pawk, Eartha Kitt, and Frank Vlastnik.

Now set for the first week in December are the PBS telecast and DVD release of the kinescope of Julie Andrews in Rodgers and Hammerstein's 1957 TV musical Cinderella.

Jessica-Snow Wilson, who understudied then replaced Kerry Butler in Little Shop of Horrors, has been mentioned for the cast of Good Vibrations.

A reading of Zanna! a revised version of the Off-Broadway Zanna, Don't! was held last month in NYC, directed by Eric Schaeffer and with a cast comprising Ta'Rea Campbell as Kate, Chester Gregory II as Arvin, Serge Kushnier as Steve, Anika Larsen as Roberta, Telly Leung as Mike, Amanda Ryan Paige as Candi, Robb Sapp as Tank, and John Tartaglia as Zanna. Larsen, Paige, and Sapp appeared in the same roles in Zanna Don't!. Zanna! appears to be aiming for Broadway in the spring.

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CD: ANNIE GET YOUR GUN/ SEPTEMBER SONG Vocalion

The Vocalion label has reissued two separate albums in a double-CD set that sells for the price of a single disc. The only thing the two recordings have in common is that they were originally released on the Decca U.K./London U.S. label.

Having concluded her career on the Broadway stage, Ethel Merman was, in the early '70s, contracted to make three albums for Decca/London, all with Stanley Black conducting the London Festival orchestra. Two of them, Merman Sings Merman 1972 and Ethel's Ridin' High 1974, were solo discs, recently reviewed here as combined on one Decca CD.

The middle recording was a new, studio version of Annie Get Your Gun. This 1973 Decca/London Annie Get Your Gun was Merman's third recording of the Irving Berlin score. She had, of course, recorded the show when it was new, in 1946 for Decca, and again for RCA Victor when she revived the hit for Music Theatre of Lincoln Center twenty years later.

Most of the studio principals on the '73 Annie are English, with Neilson Taylor an operatic Frank Butler, vocally strong but a bit dull. Also present is Merman's pal Benay Venuta, repeating her brief singing role from the film and Lincoln Center versions. Merman is still spirited and vocally grand, so there's actually nothing much wrong with this Annie Get Your Gun. Still, Merman is in more secure form on her two previous recordings of the score, and her '73 performance adds nothing to what she had already accomplished on those earlier sets.

This Annie Get Your Gun is particularly unnecessary if you have both Victor's '66 version and Decca Broadway's reissue of the '46 set. That's because the latter included four tracks from the '73 Decca/London Annie, adding material that had not been included in the abbreviated '46 recording. Yet hard-core Merman fans may feel compelled to own the '73 version just to collect the star's third take on one of her best roles.

Like the Lincoln Center recording, the '73 Annie Get Your Gun includes the song "Old-Fashioned Wedding" and the reprise of "Show Business." A final reprise at the end of Merman's '73 Annie finds the star once again making a lyric flub she sometimes committed in concert "Even with a turkey that you know has fold".

The other Decca/London recording included with this Annie Get Your Gun in Vocalion's two-CD set offers English singer Georgia Brown real name: Lily Klot in a Kurt Weill program recorded in the early '60s. Brown's first major London role was Lucy in a Royal Court revival of Weill's Threepenny Opera in 1956. In 1957, she played Lucy again, this time in the smash off-Broadway revival at the Theatre de Lys in New York's Greenwich Village.

She would return to New York to star in the 1962 Broadway production of her greatest personal success, Oliver!, repeating the role she had created in London two years earlier. Subsequent London musicals for Brown include Maggie May taking over from Rachel Roberts a title role she had initially turned down and 42nd Street Brown was one of the best Dorothy Brocks. On Broadway, she was in the first replacement cast of Side By Side By Sondheim along with Hermione Gingold, Nancy Dussault, and Larry Kert, then starred in a trio of flops, the first two the new musicals Carmelina 1979 and Roza 1987. Brown's final Broadway role was in a revival of the same show in which she had made her debut, John Dexter's staging of The Threepenny Opera starring Sting, with Brown this time playing Mrs. Peachum. No cast recordings were made of the smash London 42nd Street or of Roza and the Sting Threepenny.

Dozens of artists have recorded Kurt Weill compilation albums, but Brown's September Song is among the more enjoyable ones. Brown was a belter, so, unlike some Weill stylists, she sings these songs full out, in often intensely dramatic renditions. Conductor Ian Fraser's orchestral arrangements tend to be of the swinging-'60s variety. But Brown's performances will hold your attention.

A highlight here is her off-Broadway Threepenny solo, "Barbara's Song," and she offers two other numbers in the Blitzstein translation, "Pirate Jenny" and "Mack the Knife." The rarest item here is "Furchte Dich Nicht," from Happy End, sung in German, as is "Surabaya Johnny" from the same musical. And there's also "The Saga of Jenny," "My Ship," "Speak Low," and "It Never Was You," all sung in the distinctive Brown manner.

CD: KISMET Vocalion

Adapted from themes from the work of Russian composer Borodin, the Robert Wright-George Forrest score for the hit musical Kismet is extremely well represented on disc. You can't do better than the first recording, Columbia's 1953 original Broadway cast set starring Alfred Drake, Doretta Morrow, Richard Kiley, and Joan Diener. In 1965, Drake revived the show at Lincoln Center, and RCA made a cast album of that revival that's also strong and boasts Lee Venora in Morrow's role. And there's also the soundtrack from the 1955 film version, with Howard Keel stealing Drake's role, just as he had done with Kiss Me, Kate.

Apart from cast recordings, there are numerous studio versions of Kismet. The most complete recording was released by JAY in 1990, a double-CD set with Judy Kaye in Diener's role and bonus tracks from Timbuktu, the 1978 Broadway revisal of Kismet. Not long after the release of the JAY set came a Sony Broadway version, with opera singers Samuel Ramey, Julia Migenes, Jerry Hadley, and Ruth Ann Swenson.

Two 1964 studio versions also featured opera names. Capitol's diva was Dorothy Kirsten, opposite popular singer Gordon MacRae. Newly remastered on the Vocalion label is the other 1964 studio version, originally released in the U.S. on London Records. It features two prominent Metropolitan Opera artists, baritone Robert Merrill in Drake's role and mezzo Regina Resnik in Diener's. Along with those names, the recording's chief selling point was conductor Mantovani and his orchestra.

Kismet's score is well suited to opera singers, and all the principal numbers are included in this lush, mostly satisfying account. Merrill produces big, sumptuous sounds, although he lacks Drake's flair with the lyrics. Adele Leigh's vocals are very pretty, if not as vibrant as Morrow's or Venora's. Tenor Kenneth McKellar is also attractive in Kiley's role.

The least vocally sumptuous of the principals here is Resnik, who must make frequent shifts from chest to head voice. But Resnik supplies the disc's wittiest performance. Leading an ensemble of fifty-five players, Mantovani supervises several passages of opulent orchestral playing.