Discover Top Posts Tagged with #carousel waltz

my girl anthea grooving out in my favorite sweater!! as the world falls dooooown!

#cecil draws #oc art #anthea patel #gosh she's so cute #trans girl oc #carousel waltz

wrong, all of you, my gender is actually a spirit haunting an abandoned carousal but I'm stuck in one of those horsey things ( /mj )

alts:

for @br0-k3n-sch00lb01

#wasnt sure what you meant by webcore but i hope this is what you mean #carousel waltz #jack conte #userbox #sleep in color

As I type this, it’s 4:30 AM here in western Massachusetts, on perhaps our most widely celebrated national holiday: Thanksgiving. Though it becomes increasingly difficult to separate this holiday from the genocide that followed, most Americans still observe this day as a time for giving thanks for the blessings in our lives... and eating an enormous amount of food with family and friends. Indeed, I am awake so early today to complete housecleaning and preparations for our celebration with my husband’s family, which we’re hosting this year for the first time. (No, I’m not doing much cooking—my husband is the chef in our home—but I’ve got plenty of jobs ahead.)

On a day like this, I’m especially prone to nostalgia, which brings me to my selection for this week’s Famous Overtures series. Though my educational background is largely in classical music, it was American musical theater that owned my heart and soul for most of my early life, and indeed my performance career. In that time, no musical has ever worked its way into my heart as deeply as Richard Rodgers’ and Oscar Hammerstein II’s Carousel. This odd little story about doomed romance and a man who seeks (and largely fails) to right his wrongs after death not only has an unbelievably gorgeous, haunting score, but is also, to my mind, the most perfect example of the craft of musical theater writing in the history of the medium. Its first 20 minutes or so, for example, from the opening waltz through Julie and Billy’s kiss at the end of “If I Loved You,” is an exquisite blend of music and dialogue, flowing in and out of each other with skill so masterful, it shames the work of nearly every other Broadway creative team that’s ever lived.

Like most professional musical theater sopranos, I have my own experiences in production with Carousel, but my favorite of these actually belongs to my sister. In 1995, she joined the First National Tour of the 1994 Broadway revival (first in the ensemble, and then later taking over as Carrie Pipperidge), imported (oddly) from London, directed by Nicholas Hytner with choreography by the late, great Sir Kenneth MacMillan, who was a huge ballet idol to me. This production stands as the darkest and most beautiful I’ve ever seen, and it would be difficult for any other to come close to it. It’s that Broadway cast recording that I’ve chosen here for it’s sumptuous overture, the Carousel Waltz, conducted by musical director Eric Stern. This overture is unique in golden age musical theater, in that it has always been intended (and really, it’s required) to begin the storytelling, rather than standing alone as a piece that precedes curtain. It is in this whirlwind of sound that we first see Julie Jordan and Billy Bigelow together, at the carousel, moments away from the decisions that will change both their lives forever.

Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate! Please enjoy! - Melinda Beasi