re: First Concept Musical?
Posted by: AlanScott 02:19 pm EST 11/12/24
In reply to: re: First Concept Musical? - PlayWiz 01:58 pm EST 11/12/24

Both Sondheim and Prince said that they saw Love Life. I don't think Sondheim liked it a whole lot. He didn't especially like Alan Jay Lerner's work generally, even though he said that My Fair Lady was, IIRC, the "most entertaining musical" he ever saw, but he attributed that more to Shaw than to Lerner and Loewe. And he detested Weill's music, with the one major exception being Threepenny Opera.

Btw, doing a bit more searching just now, because I knew I'd read both Sondheim and Prince discussing Love Life briefly (although Sondheim really didn't say much about it), Sondheim was quoted in the book How Sondheim Found His Sound saying that the term concept musical was "a phrase I loathe, invented by critics."

Prince is also quoted in that book about Love Life and Allegro, but the quote originally came from Foster Hirsch's book on Prince. Anyway, Prince said that he saw both shows, noted at the time that they were driven by concepts. He said that neither show worked, though he was too young at the time to realize it, and he added that "Weill's score is swell, by the way."
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