Broadway and film musical director Paul Gemignani will lead the New York Philharmonic in five semi-staged performances of Lerner and Loewe's Camelot, May 7–10, including a newly added matinee on May 10. The May 8 performance will be telecast on Live From Lincoln Center. Camelot is being directed by Lonny Price and produced by Thomas Z. Shepard. Casting and additional credits will be announced shortly.
Gemignani, who served as conductor for the film version of Sweeney Todd, received a special Tony Award in 2001 for Lifetime Achievement in the American Theater. His stage credits include Follies at the New York Philharmonic in September 1985 and the Broadway productions of 110 in the Shade, Pacific Overtures, Passion, The Frogs, Assassins, Into the Woods, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Kiss Me, Kate, High Society, 1776, Big, Sunday in the Park with George, Crazy for You, Jerome Robbins's Broadway, Smile, The Rink, Zorba, Merrily We Roll Along, West Side Story, Evita, Sweeney Todd, On the Twentieth Century, Side by Side by Sondheim, Candide and A Little Night Music.
Camelot, with book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe, opened on Broadway at the Majestic Theater on December 3, 1960, and won four Tony Awards. Based on T.H. White's novel The Once and Future King, about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, the musical features songs such as “I Wonder What the King Is Doing Tonight,” “Camelot,” “What Do the Simple Folk Do?,” “How to Handle a Woman,” and “If Ever I Would Leave You.” It starred Julie Andrews as Guenevere, Richard Burton as King Arthur, Robert Goulet as Lancelot, and Roddy McDowall as Mordred. A 1967 film version starred Richard Harris, Vanessa Redgrave, Franco Nero, David Hemmings, and Lionel Jeffries.
