RUGANTINO on Broadway, 1964

[1971FolliesFan]

Posted: 1/4/19 at 5:08pm

I was wondering if anyone has any details on the original Broadway production of this Italian musical. In Italy it has become a classic, and is frequently revived, but from what I've gathered when it came to NY in 1964, after its 1962 premiere in Rome, it didn't do very well. Does anyone have any further information on it? 

[imeldasturn]

Posted: 1/4/19 at 5:42pm

I think it might have been some sort of limited engagement, since the show was performed in Italian with most of the original cast from the Roman production. It was known as the show where people laughed twice at every joke, since the English speakers would rely on surtitles while members of the Italian American community would just listen to the actors, hence a delay in the reaction. I think it might still be the only musical ever performed on Broadway in a foreign language and, funnily enough, the first bilingual musical, The Light in the Piazza, was again partially performed in Italian.

[jayinchelsea]

Posted: 1/4/19 at 8:10pm

At the time I was a high school student in a dramatics class in Brooklyn, and we were often invited to be the studio audience for a NYC Sunday daytime show called American Musical Theatre, which was hosted by Earl Wrightson (a sort of junior-grade Alfred Drake). One Sunday afternoon in 1964 we attended a program devoted to RUGANTINO, the Italian musical comedy that had just opened on Broadway in February. It was the first (and only?) Italian-language musical to come to Broadway, complete with subtitles. After the program, the entire school group was invited to attend that night's performance (unusual for a show to run on Sunday nights).

We all went, and had a tolerably good time. The music was composed by Armando Travajoli, who scored most of the Loren/Mastroianni films of the period, and there was an OCR, which remained in record store remainder bins of the day. Humor was quite broad, and even a bit bawdy for a 60s high school crowd, but reading the titles (sort of like opera house supertitles) was a bore.

The show was only a limited engagement (1 preview and 28 performances) because no one went, and the show had a cast of nearly 50. Oh, and the English translation was done by none other than Alfred Drake!

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 1/5/19 at 5:04am

imeldasturn said: "I think it might have been some sort of limited engagement, since the show was performed in Italian with most of the original cast from the Roman production. It was known as the show where people laughed twice at every joke, since the English speakers would rely on surtitles while members of the Italian American community would just listen to the actors, hence a delay in the reaction. I think it might still be the only musical ever performed on Broadway in a foreign language and, funnily enough, the first bilingual musical, The Light in the Piazza, was again partially performed in Italian."

I don't feel like doing a research project right now, but I'm willing to bet there were Yiddish language productions on Broadway in the early 20th century, along with German and Italian language productions of grand opera.

Luia Valdez' musical, ZOOT SUIT, was "bilingual" (Spanish and English) several decades before LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA.

[temms]

Posted: 1/5/19 at 7:39am

Side note... I’d never heard about the American Musical Theatre TV show. I’ve just watched some clips and its wonderful, I can’t believe I’ve never stumbled across it before. I presume it must have been local to NYC?

Updated On: 1/5/19 at 07:39 AM