| Yes, far from a flop, and some info on the Variety ad mentioned below | |
| Last Edit: AlanScott 10:39 pm EST 01/21/19 | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 10:37 pm EST 01/21/19 | |
| In reply to: re: My annual request for recommendations on Ohio Light Opera season - BroadwayTonyJ 06:25 pm EST 01/16/19 | |
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| I just caught up with Snowysdad's post. You are right. Music in the Air was actually quite a big hit. It was the longest-running book musical of its season, and I'm pretty sure it was one of the 10 longest-running book musicals of the 1930s. It hadn't been such a big hit, it would not have been commercially revived in the early 1950s. (And before anyone brings up Pal Joey as a flop musical that was commercially revived in the early 1950s, the original Pal Joey was also a hit.) And except for one fairly minor thing, your post a bit lower down is also spot-on regarding Hammerstein's career during this period. May Wine is often written of as a flop, but you are right about it. It had a solid run for the time period (not a great one, but a very decent one), and it paid off. Not a major hit by any means, but it paid off. The shows that Hammerstein mentioned in his famous Variety ad were Sunny River, Very Warm for May, Three Sisters, Ball at the Savoy, and Free for All, two of which only played in the UK. The exception in your earlier post was the 1942 New Moon, which was a limited run at Carnegie Hall. It was part of a season of three operettas at Carnegie Hall (following The Chocolate Soldier and The Merry Widow), commercial productions but limited runs, doubtless done on a tight budget (though with full orchestras and casts, and there was even a pit of some sort added to the hall, although perhaps it involved nothing more than removing the first few rows of seats and putting up some sort of partition). I guess Carnegie, though it did not produce the operettas, was trying to make some money during the summer months, when probably little got booked there. There were real limitations to what could be done in the space. The only one that got fairly good reviews was The Chocolate Soldier, but they ended up doing quite well at the box office. The productions were considered cheap and at least somewhat undercast in some crucial roles, but at least the last two — Merry Widow and New Moon — actually extended their runs. So if anything The New Moon was something of a success and perhaps would have extended a bit more had it not been time for the fall Carnegie Hall season to start. |
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