"I'm a bit lucky, in that I listened to / grew fond of CAMELOT when I was still awfully young, and too young to appreciate what made for a good musical versus an almost good one".
I know exactly what you mean. But also, I do think that the score of the show is FAR superior overall to the book, so if we're talking mostly about listening to the cast album, that would partly explain our very positive reaction. We didn't have to endure all those pages and pages of mostly bad dialogue. Plus, I would say that even the flaws in the score itself -- or rather specifically in Lerner's lyrics, because I think the music is great throughout -- don't matter quite so much out of context. For example, Guenevere's immaturity, selfishness, and her lack of comprehension of the realities of war, violence, which we've discussed elsewhere in this thread.
Re "Follow Me" and "I Loved You Once in Silence": I'm not a fan of the movie of CAMELOT, but I do think they did a nice job with the arrangements, orchestration, and performance of those songs. In particular, the film arrangement of "Follow Me" for a chorus including children is quite beautiful. |
