With his various writing partners, Richard Rodgers composed over 40 musicals, and many of those shows contained ballets – some more than one, and on this week’s Dress Circle (5/10 7:00 p.m.) we’re going to look at two ballets from musicals Rodgers wrote with Lorenz Hart as well as a ballet he wrote to be performed by the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo at the Metropolitan Opera House.
The two musicals we’ll be visiting are “Babes in Arms” and “On Your Toes” which were both written in the 1930s.
“Babes in Arms’ is about a group of teenagers left to fend for themselves in Long Island, NY while their vaudevillian parents are on tour. To avoid being sent to a work farm by the local sheriff, they rally together to produce their own show, and there are two ballets in this musical, and we chose the second entitled “Peter’s Journey.” Peter, an avowed communist, wins $500 in a raffle, and instead of helping the teens mount the show, he loses it all on the horses at Belmont Park. His ballet is a fantasy about how he’ll use the money to see the world.
There are also two ballets in “On Your Toes” with the most recognized being “Slaughter on 10th Avenue,” so, of course, we’re focusing on the other which is a wonderful pastiche of Oriental motif pieces like “Sheherazade.” It’s titled “La Princess Zenobia” and is a comic romp where the show’s lead, Junior, ends up in a classical ballet with no preparation at all.
We’re closing the program with the piece he wrote for The Ballet Russe. “Ghost Town” is set in the old west which comes to life when contemporary people visit the town. The story centers on a young cowboy who is framed by the town’s villain through some stolen documents and is about to be hanged. However, his girlfriend seduces the villain and steals back the documents, exposes the villain, and saves the day.
Join us this week for music by Richard Rodgers with which you may be totally unfamiliar
