Ted Otten

BECAUSE OF THE LENGTH OF THIS WEEK’S SUNDAY OPERA, THE DRESS CIRCLE WILL BEGIN ONE HOUR LATER THAN USUAL AT 8:00 P.M. (ET). As promised, we’re back with more Literary Based Musicals on this week’s Dress Circle (11/16 8:00 p.m.), Once again, we’ve focused on four novels as source material realized in fourteen songs from six different recordings.

We’re starting a series on this week’s Dress Circle (11/9 7:00 p.m.). (We hope.) with four musicals that were based on literary originals. Three novels and a play are the basis for this week’s playlist that begins with songs from “The Color Purple" and includes songs from a variety of sources for "Little Women," "Mary Poppins," and "Peter Pan."

We did our best to catalogue musicals that opened in New York for which some sort of recordings are available. November’s list has over 200 openings, and on this week’s Dress Circle (11/2 7:00 p.m.), we’re going to be sampling selections from a dozen of those shows spanning 131 years of Broadway history.

It’s Ted’s Turn.As promised, we’re looking at some of Ted’s favorites on this week’s Dress Circle (10/26 7:00 p.m.) that will include three songs from his favorite musical (He actually as one of those.), Stephen Sondheim’s “Follies.”

We’re turning to the first of two programs on this week’s Dress Circle (10/19 7:00 p.m.) that will feature some of our favorite songs from stage and screen musicals and soundtracks. Michael is up first, and he’s chosen 13 vastly different songs that really do express his rather eclectic tastes, and by no means is this even the tip of the iceberg of the list of his “favorites.”

Although it doesn't happen as much as it once did, hit songs from the musicals do occasionally make the Billboard charts, and we'll be looking at a least a dozen of them on this week's Dress Circle (10/12 7:00 p.m.). We're including three number one hits in Louis Armstrong's version of "Hello, Dolly!", The 5th Dimension's version of "Aquarius / Let the Sun Shine In" from "Hair," and "We Don't Talk About Bruno" from "Encanto."

We’re spanning 131 years of musical history on this week’s Dress Circle (10/5 7:00 p.m.) as we look at a dozen shows that opened in New York this month from a long forgotten 1894 musical to two revivals opening this year.

When George Gershwin died just a few weeks short of his 39th birthday, his brother and writing partner, Ira, was devastated and withdrew from public life and writing. It took Kurt Weill, Moss Hart, and a musical about psychoanalysis to get Ira writing again, and on this week’s Dress Circle (9/28 7:00 p.m.), we’ll be looking at some of the works that Ira penned after George.

We’re revisiting a theme we presented over a decade ago on this week’s Dress Circle (9/21 7:00 p.m.) mainly because there are many new sources from which we can choose.That theme is International Disney, and we’re looking at sixteen selections from a variety of Disney films in fourteen different languages.

We put a great deal of thought into this week’s Dress Circle (9/14 7:00 p.m.), and we came up with a program of songs that think, are thinking, and have a thought.