Emmanuel Chabrier / Urinetown

On this day in classical music: French composer Emmanuel Chabrier was born in the Auvergne region of France in 1841. As an adult, Chabrier was well-connected in the Parisian arts community, counting Faure, Chausson, d’Indy, Monet, Degas, Manet, Zola, Daudet and Mallarme among his acquaintances. Chabrier’s musical output, while not large, contained two gems: “Joyeuse Marche” and “Espana.” Listen to the Orchestra of the Podlasie Opera and Philharmonic perform “Espana.” Marcin Nałęcz-Niesiołowski conducts. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFF8l–PhHQ

On this day in the musical theatre: “Urinetown,” an offbeat musical set in a fictional time when severe water rationing resulted in people having to pay to use public toilets, closed on Broadway in 2004 after a 965-performance run. With music by Mark Hollmann and lyrics by Hollmann and Greg Kotis, “Urinetown” satirized the legal system, capitalism, social irresponsibility, populism, bureaucracy, corporate mismanagement and municipal politics. The show’s score, which won a Tony Award, was somewhat reminiscent of music by Kurt Weill. “Urinetown” also took awards for book and direction. Watch Hunter Foster and the cast of the Broadway production perform “Run, Freedom, Run” on the 2002 Tony Awards broadcast. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZV431zhXA4

Musical musings: The show, which remains a zesty and full-bodied original, began life in fact as a participant in the New York Fringe Festival, and given its toilet-centric plot, it was a reasonable level of entry. It became a surprise Off Broadway hit last spring … and it opened last night as a full-fledged Broadway show in a sporadically used and somewhat dilapidated theater (the Henry Miller on West 43rd Street), which has been modified (but with atmosphere in mind, not really spiffed up) for the purpose. Even in its previous incarnation, “Urinetown” was a show that resisted easy description, both a homage to and an outlandish spoof of the Brechtian theater of outrage and provocation. The title is emblematic, so thumb-in-the-eye unpleasant that it elicits an automatic question: Are you kidding? To which the answer is yes and no. “Urinetown” right now is simply the most gripping and galvanizing theater experience in town, equal parts visceral entertainment jolt and lingering provocation. – Bruce Weber in The New York Times

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