The year following Leonard Bernstein’s legendary debut as a conductor with the New York Philharmonic was one of seemingly miraculous success for the 25-year-old musician. After filling in for an ailing Bruno Walter on November 14, 1943, he became one of America’s most sought-after guest conductors, and by April he was conducting the premiere of Fancy Free, his new, jazzy ballet with choreography by Jerome Robbins. Centering on three sailors who compete for the attentions of two women in a bar in New York, the ballet became the hit of the American Ballet Theater’s season and soon went on tour.
Eager to expand on this success, Bernstein and Robbins decided to turn Fancy Free into a Broadway musical called On the Town. Ultimately only the three sailors made it into the musical; the plot and music were completely new. Two of Bernstein’s friends, Betty Comden and Adolph Green, would write the book and lyrics (and star in the show). They got to work on the musical while Bernstein was recuperating from surgery to correct a deviated septum; Green had his tonsils removed the same day and they worked together at the hospital. “The floor nurses and patients in nearby rooms were alternately amused and irritated by the singing and laughter that erupted from room 669,” recalled Comden.
Writing with remarkable speed, Bernstein managed to complete the score while juggling an ever increasing number of conducting engagements, television appearances and various other adventures. While conducting Fancy Free in Los Angeles, Bernstein wrote to his friend and musical mentor (and fellow leftist, Jewish homosexual) the great American composer Aaron Copland: “We’re getting the show done by leaps and bounds. It’s amazing how hard it is—such an unwieldy thing to juggle…I miss you terribly. I need your cynical ears for my latest tales of love and limbs—from Montreal to San Francisco. Oh, what a divine one in San Francisco!”
Veteran theater director George Abbott was brought in to help secure funding and do any play doctoring necessary before the premiere. Bernstein later recalled, “what I was very much afraid of was cutting a lot of the symphonic music,” which Abbott “used to make sort of friendly fun of…by calling it ‘that Prokofiev stuff,’ and I was afraid all that ‘Prokofiev stuff’ would go, but it didn’t—not a bar of it.”
Indeed, Bernstein had written one of the most sophisticated Broadway scores in history, although one Boston critic’s assessment of the music as “an energetic blend of Stravinsky and Gershwin” is perhaps a more accurate comparison with regard to Bernstein’s influences than Prokofiev. When the show opened in New York in December 1944, it was a smash. MGM would later create a movie version starring Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra (unfortunately the film adaptation cut, replaced or otherwise altered much of Bernstein’s music).
As Jerome Robbins’ participation would imply, dance played a major role in the musical. Bernstein thus extracted some of the dance numbers—full of “that Prokofiev stuff”—to create Three Dance Episodes from On the Town, which has remained a popular concert work since its premiere in San Francisco in 1946.
The piece begins with “The Great Lover Displays Himself.” In the musical, this was a dream sequence in which a sailor imagines “Miss Turnstiles,” a young woman featured on a poster in the subway. The Copland-esque second movement was a pas de deux (a dance for a man and a woman) based on the song “Lonely Town” from the musical. The dancers played the roles of a young woman and a sailor who seduces and abandons her. The finale includes the tune from “New York, New York” and depicts a lively gathering of adventure-seeking sailors in Times Square. Throughout, the score captures the joi de vivre of a young genius suddenly catapulted to stardom.
Don’t miss Bernstein’s Three Dance Episodes from On the Town at Andrés Conducts Dvořák 7 February 15, 17 & 18. Get tickets and more info at www.houstonstmphony.org.
This presentation of Three Dance Episodes from On the Town is part of the Houston Symphony’s celebration of Leonard Bernstein’s centennial.
