Title: LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA (ORIGINAL CAST)
Artist: GUETTEL, ADAM
Format: Compact Disc
Like a shimmering pearl, The Light in the Piazza emerged from a sea of revivals and movie adaptations to secure 11 Tony nominations in 2005, including Best Musical. Based on an Elizabeth Spencer novella, it follows a mother, Margaret (Victoria Clark), and her daughter, Clara (Kelli O'Hara), as they take a vacation to Italy. There, Clara and a young Italian fall in love, but Margaret is determined to keep them apart. The Light in the Piazza doesn't fit the model of most Broadway scores. It is more of a unified whole, sometimes jarring, sometimes following the patterns of speech, and sometimes unfolding in glorious sheens of sound. Composer-lyricist Adam Guettel (son of Mary Rodgers, grandson of Richard Rodgers) seems the most likely heir apparent to Sondheim in the current generation of musical theater creators. O'Hara's voice soars in the score's most beautiful moments (Say It Somehow, The Light in the Piazza), but Clark enjoys two exquisitely lyrical moments with Dividing Day and Let's Walk. She was one of the show's six Tony winners (for Leading Actress), along with Guettel's score and the orchestrations. The Light in the Piazza was one of the most highly anticipated theatrical events of the decade. The Los Angeles Times declared its creator "a composer for the new century'" on the strength of his two Off-Broadway productions, the 1996 Obie-Award winning folk musical Floyd Collins and the 1998 song cycle, Myths and Hymns. Few musicals in the course of their development have generated so much press or been praised so highly on the road as The Light in the Piazza and both the New Yorker and The New York Times magazine devoted in-depth coverage to the evolution of Guettel's sophisticated, deeply moving score.
Price: $39.99 (AUD Includes GST)
Buy!