Samuel Barber / Romance Romance

On this day in classical music: Samuel Barber’s opera “Vanessa” was given its premiere at the Metropolitan Opera in 1958 with Dimtri Mitropoulos conducting. For the Met premiere, Sena Jurinac was cast in the title role but backed out six weeks before the premiere. Eleanor Steber replaced her and became strongly identified with the role and the opera. Steber was joined by Rosalind Elias, Nicolai Gedda, Regina Resnik and Giorgio Tozzi. Barber won the first of his two Pulitzer Prizes for “Vanessa.” The second, for his piano concerto, came five years later. Gian-Carlo Menotti wrote the libretto for Barber’s opera. Listen to the PSU Symphony Orchestra perform the delightful “Intermezzo” from “Vanessa.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZPyk_lnJoY

On this day in the musical theatre: “Romance Romance,” a musical featuring an attractive, eclectic score by Barry Harman and Keith Herrmann, closed on Broadway after 297 performances in 1988. The musical featured two acts linked by the common theme of love. The first act, titled “The Little Comedy,” was based on a short story by Arthur Schnitzler and explored the budding relationship between two 19th century Viennese aristocrats posing as members of the working class. Act II, titled “Summer Share,” was based on Jules Renard’s 1898 play “Le pain de ménage.” Set in the Hamptons in the 1980s, the piece explored the flirtations of two married couples sharing a rented cottage. Playing the leads in both acts were Alison Fraser and Scott Bakula. Watch Bakula and Fraser perform “I’ll Always Remember the Song” and “It’s Not Too Late” on the 1988 Tony Awards broadcast. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Offpzfq7MQ

Musical musings: “Romance Romance,” lately the littlest big musical Off Off Broadway, has made it uptown, in a slightly enhanced production that loses nothing of the charm and intelligence of the original and gains a thoroughly winning performance by Alison Fraser. Down at the Actor’s Outlet Theater last season, Ms. Fraser was a pleasure; at the Helen Hayes, in romantic Broadway tradition, she is a star. Looking at moments a little like a young Angela Lansbury, sounding just a little like Bernadette Peters, she radiates a witty presence all her own, from the moment she delivers her first smashing solo, “Goodbye, Emil.” (“It was never true romance/ Just a question of finance.”) After that, when the spotlight is on her, which is most of the time, the evening sparkles. In “Summer Share,” the evening glides from Vienna wry to Hampton rue, with Mr. Harman, who did the book and lyrics for “Olympus on My Mind,” slipping only occasionally into sentimentality. “The Little Comedy” is the shrewder tale, but both plays deal with the limitations that character or mere habit place on desire, for good or bed. However much Alfred and Josefine dream of wholesome love, they are not about to suffer discomfort to achieve it. However much Sam and Monica long for an affair, they are too entangled in their marriages. In a Broadway season so full of pretentiousness, this show is delightfully small scale, the scale on which most of us live. – Walter Goodman in The New York Times

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