CDs: You Must Believe in Spring
Whether she's vamping on Broadway and in the West End as Velma in Chicago, performing Kurt Weill on the concert stage, or singing contemporary pop in a cabaret, German singer-actress Ute Lemper is an in-your-face stylist about whom it's impossible to remain neutral. Turning on a dime from Garbo-esque glamourpuss to madcap clown, she's an original, a bracingly eccentric, confrontational performer.
Recorded live at Manhattan's chic Cafe Carlyle on February 25 of this year, Lemper's new Blood and Feathers CD is named after one of her own compositions. But the eclectic program ranges from Brecht-Weill "Bilbao Song," "Moon of Alabama," her daring opener "Pirate Jenny" to Piaf "Milord," "Accordeoniste", Sondheim "The Ladies Who Lunch", and Kander and Ebb a salute to Cabaret; Sally Bowles in Jerome Savary's late-'80s Paris production was a milestone in Lemper's career. From the pop world, there are songs by Tom Waits, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, and Sting, all a part of the "moon" medley that's central to the act.
A four-piece band piano, guitar, bass, drums functions effectively throughout. For full appreciation, of course, Lemper must be seen in action. But she's such a vocal chameleon that one meets a wide range of characters even on an audio-only disc like this one. Few cabaret acts attempt as much as Lemper's, but, as usual, she carries it off.
THE BROADWAY MUSICALS OF 1926 Bayview
The optimistic, pre-Depression year of 1926 saw close to forty musical productions open on Broadway. The Broadway Musicals of 1926, the eleventh release in Bayview's series devoted to the Town Hall Broadway By the Year concerts, offers songs from ten of them.
The familiar numbers are from The Desert Song "It," "The Riff Song," "One Alone," title song; Oh, Kay! "Do, Do, Do," "Someone to Watch Over Me"; Garrick Gaieties "Mountain Greenery"; and Betsy "Blue Skies," "This Funny World".
But well over half the material here is rare, including four songs getting their first-ever recording. Eddie Korbich who was excellent in the recent After the Night and the Music sells "It Pays to Advertise" Queen High and the Gershwins' "Lost Barbershop Chord" the revue Americana. That fine period stylist Nancy Anderson chirps her way through "A Little Birdie Told Me So" Rodgers and Hart's Peggy-Ann, then offers a pretty, wistful and unmiked "Sort O' Lonesome" the revue The Merry World.
Nancy Opel swings through "Blowin' the Blues Away" Americana and joins Korbich for Rodgers and Hart's playful "Maybe It's Me" Peggy-Ann. Cabaret singer Bill Daugherty, once part of the team of Daugherty and Field, duets with Anderson on the catchy "Why Do I?" Rodgers and Hart's The Girl Friend. On his own, he does well by an unmiked "One Alone" and the poignant "This Funny World."
Marc Kudisch has fun with "I Would Like to Fondle You" Castles in the Air and "Don't Fall in Love with Me" another little-known item from The Merry World. Kudisch also supplies robust and unmiked accounts of The Desert Song's "Riff Song" and title song.
The concert's special guest is Sutton Foster, who reunites with her Millie co-star Kudisch for "Do, Do, Do." Sustaining her flapper image from Millie, she does a cute "It," then turns to a simple, plaintive and unmiked "Someone to Watch Over Me." Foster is also part of an all-girl trio with Anderson and Opel on a song inspired by Anita Loos' book "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" Queen High.
Musical director Ross Patterson's four-man band accompanies this, one of the better outings in the series.
THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT DRG
French director-writer Jacques Demy and composer Michel Legrand may have invented the pop opera when they collaborated on the lovely, all sung 1964 film The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. In 1967, they followed it up with another musical, The Young Girls of Rochefort, again starring Catherine Deneuve, this time appearing with her sister, Francoise Dorleac. Dorleac was killed in a car accident shortly after the film was completed.
The sisters play twins. Veteran French film star Danielle Darrieux, seen on Broadway in Coco and Ambassador, plays their unmarried mother. Playing carnival men who are in Rochefort for the village fair are Americans George Chakiris Oscar winner for West Side Story and Grover Dale of the original Broadway cast of West Side Story, and later a Broadway director-choreographer. Rochefort was an homage to Hollywood musicals of the '50s, and it features a bona fide icon of the genre, Gene Kelly, playing an internationally renowned pianist named Andy Miller and giving the stamp of authenticity to Demy's project.
In the story, Delphine Deneuve writes music and teaches piano, while her sister Solange Dorleac teaches dance. Both yearn to find their ideal mates, while their mother regrets giving up the chance to marry the father Michel Piccoli of her little son. Meanwhile, sailor Maxence Jacques Perrin paints a portrait of his ideal woman, who looks exactly like Delphine, while Kelly's Miller falls in love at first sight with Solange, then loses track of her.
The film takes place from Friday to Monday of a weekend festival in Rochefort, where it was shot. Throughout, the characters repeatedly just miss encountering each other, but by the end, three couples are united.
Unlike Cherbourg, Rochefort is not entirely sung, but it does feature a great deal of singing, and, what with Kelly, Chakiris, and Dale, about as much choreography. With the exception of Darrieux, all of the vocals are dubbed, but the voices match up beautifully with the actors.
When it debuted in '67, Rochefort got a mixed critical reception and was a commercial failure. But the film's reputation has grown considerably over the years. It's lightweight, and lacks the emotional power of Cherbourg. But if Legrand's score is not as filled with memorable themes as Cherbourg's, it's attractively jazzy and contains numerous catchy, recurring melodies. One of them became, with English lyrics by Marilyn and Alan Bergman, "You Must Believe in Spring."
DRG has just issued on two CDs the complete film soundtrack, and it comes with a number of bonuses. First, there are two tracks from the soundtrack not previously released on the double-LP version. Then there's a work tape in which Legrand tries out a variety of melodies, all ultimately discarded, for the twins' big "jumelle" duet. That's followed by an English-language recording from 1967 of the same number. Then we get a half-hour of instrumental versions of songs from the score.
All of this is attractive, but it should be noted that the film, like Cherbourg, is available on DVD, and because it's so colorful and features so much choreography by Norman Maen and Kelly, it makes more sense to watch it than to listen to this lengthy soundtrack album. Note too that the DRG release does not include English translations of the French lyrics, as did the Philips double-LP release. The DVD, of course, comes with English subtitles.
Let's also mention that in 2003, a stage version of Rochefort premiered at Paris' Palais des Congres, and it included eight new songs with lyrics by Alain Boublil, who also did the book for the stage version. Demy died in 1990. The French stage production of Rochefort yielded a CD as well as a DVD of the complete show.