By Daniel Hathaway
IN THIS EDITION:
. Next up at Wooster and Kent Blossom Festivals
. Report from “Europe’s Most Interesting Opera Festival”
. Almanac: remembering Oscar Hammerstein II in 4,600 of his 25,000 letters — “the best ones”
HAPPENING TODAY:
At 2pm, Ohio Light Opera’s production of Frank Loesser’s How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying returns to the Freedlander Theatre stage in Wooster.
And at 7:30, the second of four Kent Blossom Music Festival Faculty Concerts in Ludwig Recital Hall on the Kent State campus features pianist Orion Weiss, piano (pictured), violinist William Hagen, and members of The Cleveland Orchestra.
INTERESTING READS:
One important fixture of summer in southern France is the Aix Festival in the charming town of Aix-en-Provence. New York Times critic Joshua Barone has filed two reports on this year’s opera productions. Click below to read:
At a French Opera Festival, Premieres in Pursuit of Happiness
and
The Ups and Downs of Europe’s Most Interesting Opera Festival
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
By Jarrett Hoffman
A 1,088-page book published in April, 2022 is a timely — if time-intensive — way to celebrate lyricist, librettist, and musical theater icon Oscar Hammerstein II, who was born on this date in 1895 in New York City.
Mark Eden Horowitz, a Senior Music Specialist at the Library of Congress, took the plunge into the Library’s collection of Hammerstein’s many correspondences: 25,000 letters. Of those, Horowitz transcribed “the best ones” — a mere 4,600.
And of those, the cream of the crop made the cut for The Letters of Oscar Hammerstein II — “letters that showcase not just the creative Hammerstein, but Hammerstein the businessman, the mentor, the activist, and occasionally, the corrector,” Bob Mondello writes in an article for NPR.
If a thousand-page book isn’t your idea of a good time (perhaps your copy of Infinite Jest is well-acquainted with a dust bunny or two), that article highlights a handful of interesting and often amusing letters.
One exchange centered around a falsehood in the song “June Is Bustin’ Out All Over” from Carousel, particularly in these lines:
The sheep aren’t sleepin’ any more!
All the rams that chase the ewe-sheep
Are determined there’ll be new sheep
And the ewe-sheep aren’t even keepin’ score!
The problem, as was pointed out to Hammerstein, is that sheep tend to mate only once a year: not in June, but in late autumn.
He responded thus:
I was delighted with the parts of your letter praising my work, and thrown into consternation by the unwelcome news about the eccentrically frigid behavior of ewes in June. I have since checked your statement and found it to be true. It looks very much as if, in the interests of scientific honesty, I shall have to abandon the verse dealing with sheep.
(He didn’t.)
A film version of Carousel was released in 1956. Watch the clip featuring “June Is Bustin’ Out All Over” here.
