It’s been a very strange summer so far, but it’s moving along, and we’re going to be welcoming the final full month of summer by looking at some of the shows that opened in New York in August on this week’s Dress Circle (8/3 7:00 p.m.). As we do this, we’ll be looking at shows that span 138 years of musical history.
Our earliest show is the first of two operettas on this week’s program. We’ve scheduled a march from the score of “Bellman,” an 1887 work centering on the Swedish composer/poet named Carl Michael Bellman. With music by Franz von Suppe, it’s no wonder that it had a healthy run for the time.
Our most recent opening is from later this month when the 25th anniversary tour of “Mamma Mia!”, the ABBA musical kicks off with a limited Broadway run. The cast might be mostly unknown, but the show and songs have been well received around the world. Of course, we don’t have any recording from this cast, nor was there one from the original Broadway cast, so we’ll happily “make-do” with the original London cast recording.
We’re also turning to some other recent openings from shows like “Back to the Future,” the revival of “Once Upon a Mattress,” and the current hit that’s still running, “Hamilton.”
We’ve also got songs from “Me and My Girl,” a Rodgers and Hart musical titled “Higher and Higher,” “Hairspray,” and “La Cage aux Folles.”
Oh, that other operetta? It’s one from the pen of Leo Fall entitled “The Dollar Princess” which ran for an incredibly impressive 250 performances after its opening in 1910.
