CDs: Channing's Debut
Marc Blitzstein 1905-1963 had a succès de scandale with his Federal Theater Project musical The Cradle Will Rock, about the attempt to form a steel workers' union in Steeltown, USA. Again writing book, music, and lyrics, Blitzstein's follow-up show to Cradle was No for an Answer, set at the Diogenes Club, a club for Greek-American workers at a summer resort town out of season. It concerns the attempted unionization of these workers; when the club's leader, Joe, is murdered and the clubhouse burned down, the cause is taken up by Joe's father, Nick.
Where the characters of The Cradle Will Rock were deliberately written as two-dimensional cartoons, No for an Answer was Blitzstein's attempt to deal with real people. According to musical theatre historian Stanley Green, both works share a common theme: "The downtrodden, purehearted workers must organize and fight for their rights or greedy, cruel capitalists will always have them at their mercy."
Referred to by its composer as "a people's opera," No for an Answer, like The Cradle Will Rock, typified left-wing "agit-prop" theatre of the 1930s, and may have been slightly out of date by the time it opened. No for an Answer had its premiere in a series of three Sunday night performances at the Mecca Temple, now City Center, on January 5, 12, and 19, 1941. With Blitzstein himself the sole accompaniment at the piano, the cast included Martin Wolfson, who would go on to play Peachum in Blitzstein's hugely successful 1954 adaptation of Brecht and Weill's The Threepenny Opera.
More significantly, in the role of Bobby, one of a pair of nightclub entertainers, was a young woman named Carol Channing, not yet twenty, and making her first professional appearance. With Coby Ruskin, Channing performed a pair of numbers, "Dimples" and "Fraught," the latter a potent spoof of torch songs.
In The New York Times, drama critic Brooks Atkinson wrote that "as spoken drama, No for an Answer may be threadbare and routine. But Mr. Blitzstein is a musician, and he has remarkably succeeded in making music give emotion to characters and themes....In recent years the dramatic stage has had no better example of the power of music to create men and women through song...an original music drama that arouses enthusiasm for the theatre."
If Blitzstein's The Cradle Will Rock ranks as the first musical to get an original cast recording, the same author's No for an Answer appears to be the second, with Oklahoma! the third, albeit the first with full orchestra. With Blitzstein at the piano, the cast album of No for an Answer was recorded by the obscure Keynote label, and released in the odd configuration of three ten-inch discs and two twelve-inch discs. In 1982, AEI issued the Keynote recordings of No for an Answer on LP, and now the same label has reissued them on CD.
Following a generally positive reception, No for an Answer was announced for a future life on Broadway, but sufficient funds were not forthcoming, and the piece languished, but for a one-night revival in 1960 at Circle in the Square, with Wolfson repeating his role and Nancy Dussault taking Channing's part.
Listening to No for an Answer, one may find that the score is considerably more complex and operatic than the more overtly tuneful Cradle. There's a fine duet, combining music with spoken word, in "Francie," for hero Joe and his girl, and a strong novelty number, a hobo's tale of "Penny Candy." Channing sounds considerably different from the Channing heard on her next cast recording, 1949's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
Blitzstein would go on to such further operatic pieces as Broadway's Regina and Juno and the road closer Reuben Reuben, finding his greatest success with the off-Broadway Threepenny Opera. The No for an Answer recording does not appear to include the complete score, and one notes that the songs preserved here don't supply much of the work's narrative. Still, No for an Answer ranks as a significant chapter in an important musical-theatre career.
THE MARC BLITZSTEIN CENTENNIAL CONCERT CD Original Cast Records
Concentrating on Blitzstein's art songs and operatic pieces, this centennial concert is made up of live recordings made at centennial events at the People's Voice Cafe in Manhattan, at Queens College, and at venues in Great Neck and Long Beach, NY.
Of the mostly rare material, nine of the numbers get their first recording here, and nine of the numbers feature music completed by Leonard Lehrman, the recording's co-producer and accompanist. There's one cut song from Reuben, Reuben; otherwise, the concert avoids Blitzstein's musicals.
There are three selections from the one-act opera Idiot's First, based on a Bernard Malamud story, begun in 1962 and finished by Lehrman. There are three selections from Blitzstein's unfinished opera Sacco and Vanzetti, optioned by the Metropolitan Opera in 1959. There are three settings of poems by Walt Whitman, one by Rupert Brooke, and one by Dorothy Parker. And three other songs are all Blitzstein.
The most interesting item here is a half-hour rendition of I've Got the Tune, written for the radio and first broadcast with Lotte Lenya in 1937. This is an autobiographical parable about a composer with a tune but no words and no singer.
As a bonus track, there's Blitzstein's 1938 recording of "Nickel Under the Foot" from The Cradle Will Rock. Several of the singers Helene Williams, Robert Osborne have long associations with the work of Blitzstein.
This compilation, on which the singers often sound a bit distant, is a worthy addition to the field of Blitzstein recordings, but is likely to be of only peripheral interest to admirers of Blitzstein's Broadway shows.