Category: Richard Rodgers

American Treasures: Richard Rodgers: Finding the Music Inside

Consider the following bits of text: “Doe, a deer, a female deer,” “Oh, what a beautiful morning!”, “We’ll have Manhattan,” “Some enchanted evening.” Unless you are wholly ignorant of popular music before the Beatles, you will not be able to read those words without hearing in your head the music that drapes them as perfectly…


‘The Sound of Music’: New Production Is an Audience Favorite

LINCOLNSHIRE, Ill.—“The Sound of Music” first played in New Haven, Connecticut, as a pre-Broadway try-out on Oct. 3, 1959. After the show, its composer Richard Rodgers, its lyricist Oscar Hammerstein, and the show’s performers waited for the town’s critical reviews to come in. When the newspapers came out with bad reviews, everyone was crestfallen believing…


American Treasures: The Songs of Richard Rodgers

Today many think of Broadway musicals as esoteric or effete, but from the 1920s through the 1960s, they were mainstream popular entertainment, spinning off hit songs recorded by stars like Bing Crosby and Judy Garland. My Uncle Keith, for example, was a tough Army vet, a man’s man, yet he loved musical theater. When we…