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Broadway Bookshelf

Biographies, show books, musical scores, history, and must-read theatre books.
Biographies Show Books Autobiography For Actors Musical Scores Reference Books History

The Cambridge Companion to David Mamet (1/1/2004)

This collection of specially written essays offers both student and theatregoer a guide to one of the most celebrated American dramatists working today. Readers will find the general and accessible descriptions and analyses provide the perfect introduction to Mamet's work. The volume covers the full range of Mamet's writing, including now classic plays such as American Buffalo and Glengarry Glen Ross, and his more recent work, Boston Marriage, among others, as well as his films, such as The Ver...
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Golda's Balcony: A Play (11/21/2003)

The sold out off-Broadway smash has moved to Broadway! The rise of Golda Meir from impoverished Russian schoolgirl to Prime Minister of Israel is one of the most amazing stories of the 20th century. Now her life has been transformed into a one-woman play of overwhelming power and triumph by William Gibson, author of The Miracle Worker. Golda's Balcony earned actress Tovah Feldshuh a 2003 Drama Desk award."Enlightening ... Now, hearing from someone who was there at the birth of the country, who ...
Golda's Balcony: A Play Cover
The Wadsworth Anthology of Drama (6/25/2003)

Known through three editions as the boldest and most distinguished introduction to drama, William Worthen's pace-setting text continues to provide exciting plays usefully situated within their historical and cultural contexts.
The Wadsworth Anthology of Drama Cover
The Lyrics of Noel Coward (1/1/2002)

Mad Dogs and Englishmen, Don't Put your Daughter on the Stage, Mrs Worthington and over 250 more lyrics from Coward's musical masterpieces. Noel Coward is one of the greatest lyricists of the twentieth century. Songs such as A Room with a View, The Stately Homes of England, Mad Dogs and Englishmen and Mrs Worthington are known, sung and loved the world over. This edition gathers together over 250 of Coward's lyrics, arranged in chronological order and grouped by show. In addition, these masterp...
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Theatre World 1994-1995, Vol. 51 (1/1/2000)

Theatre World, the statistical and pictorial record of the Broadway and off-Broadway season, touring companies, and professional regional companies throughout the United States, has become a classic in its field. The book is complete with cast listings, replacement producers, directors, authors, composers, opening and closing dates, song titles, and much, much more. There are special sections with biographical data, obituary information, listings of annual Shakespeare festivals and major drama a...
Theatre World 1994-1995, Vol. 51 Cover
Theatre World 1993-1994, Vol. 50 (1/1/2000)

Theatre World, the statistical and pictorial record of the Broadway and off-Broadway season, touring companies, and professional regional companies throughout the United States, has become a classic in its field. The book is complete with cast listings, replacement producers, directors, authors, composers, opening and closing dates, song titles, and much, much more. There are special sections with biographical data, obituary information, listings of annual Shakespeare festivals and major drama a...
Theatre World 1993-1994, Vol. 50 Cover
The Social Significance of Modern Drama (1/1/2000)

Out of print virtually since its completion in 1914, Emma Goldman's pioneer work Social Significance in Modern Drama bridges modern drama and political philosophy, pointing out the road that remains to be travelled toward a theatre of social empowerment. Activist, feminist, philosopher and anarchist, Emma Goldman was a passionate thinker about all things modern when the 20th century was still raw and new. The emergence of her treatise on the theatre after years of obscurity is certain to arouse ...
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Polaroid Stories (1/1/1999)

Naomi Iizuka’s 1997 play, Polaroid Stories, consciously uses stories, characters and themes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses to tell the stories of street kids living on the edge in a desolate, urban landscape. Because these characters are named after Orpheus and Eurydice, and Echo and Narcissus, or based on stories of Dionysus, and Ariadne and Theseus, and because scenes are entitled “The Story of Semele” or “Theseus in the Labyrinth,” Iizuka creates a world that has two dimensions: the g...
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The Complete Lyrics Of Lorenz Hart (1/1/1995)

This expanded edition includes an appendix of previously uncollected and newly discovered lyrics.
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Musicals!: A Complete Selection Guide for Local Productions (12/2/1994)

From A . . . My Name Is Alice to The Zulu and the Zayde, this second edition of a title first published in 1984 contains information about 500 musicals (100 of which are new to this edition) available for production by community theaters and schools. Listed alphabetically by title, each entry includes date of original production, playwright, composer, lyricist, plot summary, licensing agent and music publisher, recordings and librettos available (for in-depth research by the user), and cast (num...
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The Story of Starlight Theatre (3/1/1992)

Starlight Theatre is a magic place where an evening of musical theatre under the stars in Kansas City's Swope Park speaks so strongly of emotion that the audience is transformed by the presence of the creative experience. This book is filled with historical photos and provides a "behind the scenes" look at the real workings of the second largest outdoor theatre in the United States. A must for theatre goers everywhere. Unlike many other art forms, live outdoor theatre is a participatory expe...
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Edward Albee: A Singular Journey (2000)

The American playwright Edward Albee's greatest glories came early in his career. When his first play, The Zoo Story, debuted in Provincetown, Mass., in 1960, he was called, as Gussow (cultural writer for the New York Times) puts it here, "our homegrown equivalent of Beckett." After his masterpiece, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was staged in 1962, Albee was heralded as the voice of his generation. Then came two decades of debilitating alcoholism and commercial and critical flops. However, his...
Edward Albee: A Singular Journey Cover
Acting With Shakespeare: The Comedies (2000)

In this book adapted from a television master class, actress Janet Suzman has crafted a superbly concise and clearly written account of how to develop fully realized characters in Shakespeare. Here she shares her poignant observations. Includes a foreword, and great photos throughout. Also available: DVD, HL00314739
Acting With Shakespeare: The Comedies Cover
Stage Directing: A Practical Guide (2003)

Stage Directing: A Practical Guide demystifies the art of directing for the stage. Offering detailed advice on every aspect of the process, it explores the ways in which a carefully orchestrated performance can be made to appear fresh and spontaneous. It shows how the ties between play, performers, and audience can be strengthened, and how the strategic intervention of the director can help to produce the most polished and elegant performances. Written for all those involved in the direction of ...
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Performer Prepares: A Guide to Song Preparation for Actors, Singers and Dancers (2000)

A Performer Prepares is a 13-part master class on how to perform on any stage from bleak rehearsal room to the Palace Theatre. The class covers the basic Broadway song numbers, from show ballad to showstopper. With precise, logical steps and dynamic and entertaining dialogues between himself and his students, David Craig takes anyone with the desire to shine from an audition to final curtain call. These lessons on the pages recreate as closely as possible the unique interpersonal dyamic of Craig...
Performer Prepares: A Guide to Song Preparation for Actors, Singers and Dancers Cover
Lenya the Legend (1998)

Born Karoline Blamauer in Vienna in 1898, Lenya spent an impoverished childhood there before launching her career in Zurich and then Berlin, where she met and married Weill. The toast of the Berlin arts scene, Weill and Lenya left Germany in 1933 following the election of Hitler as chancellor. Weill was Jewish and an advocate of freedom of expression--his play Der Silbersee ("The Silver Lake"), which contained a caricature of Hitler, had already been banned by the authorities. The couple went to...
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Ingmar Bergman: A Life in the Theater (1992)

A revised and expanded edition highlights the developments that have occurred in the interim since the first edition with reference to Bergman's triumphant return to the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm after years of self-imposed exile.
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The Impossible Musical: The "Man of La Mancha" Story (2003)

Man of La Mancha is arguably the most popular musical drama of all time, most recently on Broadway starring Brian Stokes Mitchell. Dale Wasserman, however, had more trouble getting it on to a Broadway stage than Don Quixote ever had with those damn windmills. For centuries, writers all over the world had tried to stage Cervantes' comic masterpiece, and all had failed. On a sabbatical to Spain in the late 1950s, screenwriter-stage director Dale Wasserman had the insight to change that - Don Quixo...
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Kurt Weill - On Stage: From Berlin to Broadway (2004)

A provocative but uneven look at the composer of The Threepenny Opera, Lady in the Dark and other well-known musicals, this biography traces Weill's career from his satirical Weimar collaborations with Brecht to the musicals he created for Broadway after fleeing the Nazis in 1933. Brooklyn College film professor Hirsch (Harold Prince and the American Musical Theater) draws on extensive documentation from New York's Kurt Weill Foundation and new interviews with surviving participants to argue tha...
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Reading Stephen Sondheim: A Collection of Critical Essays (1999)

Stephen Sondheim is arguably the most important writer for the American musical stage today, the equivalent in his field of Miller, Albee, O'Neill, and Williams. Yet he has rarely been treated seriously within the academy. Reading Stephen Sondheim: A Collection of Critical Essays is an attempt to remedy that situation. Bringing together scholars and critics from a wide variety of literary and theoretical perspectives, this book undertakes to examine all of Sondheim's major productions and themes...
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Oh What a Circus (1999)

With wit and candour, Tim Rice describes the gilded path that took him from cricket and comic-obsessed schoolboy to one of the world's best-known lyricists. Along the way he worked as a petrol pump attendant and articled clerk before becoming a management trainee at EMI. But it was his fateful meeting with Andrew Lloyd Webber in 1965 which was to be the turning-point in Tim's career. Immediate fortune didn't follow and it took the album of Jesus Christ Superstar to reach no.1 in the States befor...
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Zero Dances: A Biography of Zero Mostel (2004)

Talent propelled Zero Mostel from the Orthodox Jewish home of his immigrant parents to the underground nightclubs where he began his career doing stand-up comedy and on to theatre, film, and television. But whatever the medium and whatever the role - comic or serious or frequently both - the personality of the man was inescapable. He was always Zero. Twenty-one years after his death, the extraordinary Zero Mostel reappears in the unconventional biography he deserves. Arthur Sainer's research, pa...
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Under the Rainbow: The Real Liza Minnelli (1996)

The daughter of Judy Garland and movie director Vincente Minnelli, Liza Minnelli has endured excruciating trauma and failure and exhilarating passion and success - with the help of drugs, lovers, and a few close friends. Under the Rainbow is the touching story of a bewildered little girl searching for the childhood she never had and a love that has eluded her. There are two Lizas: the dynamic entertainer whose dramatic voice and stage presence embraced the romantic imagination of her audience; a...
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Bette Midler: Still Divine (2002)

Growing up a self-proclaimed "ugly, fat little Jewish girl with problems," Bette Midler traded in her job at a Hawaiian pineapple processing plant for a trip to the Big Apple where, in the early 1970s, she re-created herself as the Divine Miss M, a brassy, bawdy cabaret act performing in a gay bathhouse. By the end of the decade, she had an Oscar nomination (for The Rose) to go with her two Grammys, two Golden Globes and Tony award. After a rough start (her 1982 movie Jinxed was prophetically ti...
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Frank Loesser: A Most Remarkable Fella (2000)

The daughter of one of America's most prolific and enduring composers turns her pen to an engaging, revealing portrait of her father, her family and the life they shared in the giant shadow that his fame cast. With the 1992 Broadway revivals of Guys and Dolls and The Most Happy Fella, Frank Loesser's music once again reverberates around the nation. Loesser was the composer, lyricist and driving force behind these classics, as well as How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and Where's C...
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Act One: An Autobiography (1989)

With this new edition, the classic best-selling autobiography by the late playwright Moss Hart returns to print in the thirtieth anniversary of its original publication. Issued in tandem with Kitty, the revealing autobiography of his wife, Kitty Carlisle Hart, Act One, is a landmark memoir that incluenced a generation of theatergoers, dramatists, and general book readers everywhere. The book eloquently chronicles Moss Hart's impoverished childhood in the Bronx and Brooklyn and his long, determin...
Act One: An Autobiography Cover
The Street Where I Live (1980)

This is a highly personal biography of three great shows: My Fair Lady, Camelot, and Gigi. Warm, witty, loving, often hilarious, and poignant in its affection for a glorious era in the American theater, it is the story of what Mr. Lerner calls "the sundown of wit, eccentricity, and glamour." The author himself, try as he will to keep himself out of his pages, emerges not merely as a great talent, but as a man of laughter and love. His principals, however, are Moss Hart and Fritz Loewe, with a st...
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Jerry Herman: The Lyrics (2003)

Jerry Herman is one of Broadway's most celebrated composers and lyricists. He is the author of two of the biggest successes in musical theatre history: Hello, Dolly! and Mame as well as many others. This book offers all of the lyrics to Herman's well-loved songs along with rare production photographs from all of his shows. It includes early lyrics from Herman's first Broadway revues and shows, songs cut from his best-loved shows, and new lyrics. Herman's songs have been sung by all the masters o...
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Jerry Herman Poet Of The Showtune (2004)

The first in-depth biography of the celebrated composer/lyricist who created Hello, Dolly!, Mame, and La Cage aux Folles This revealing and comprehensive book tells the full story of Jerry Herman’s life and career, from his early work in cabaret to his recent compositions for stage, screen, and television. Stephen Citron draws on extensive open-ended interviews with Jerry Herman as well as with scores of his theatrical colleagues, collaborators, and close friends. The resulting book—...
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Lorenz Hart: A Poet on Broadway (1995)

Lorenz Hart singlehandedly changed the craft of lyric writing. When Larry Hart first met Dick Rodgers in 1919, the commercial song lyric consisted of tired cliches and cloying Victorian sentimentality. Hart changed all that, always avoiding the obvious, aiming for the unexpected phrase that would twang the nerve or touch the heart. Endowed with both a buoyant wit and a tender, almost raw sincerity, Hart brought a poetic complexity to his art, capturing the everyday way people talk and weaving it...
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Cole Porter: A Biography (1979)

In 1933 Irving Berlin wrote to composer-lyricist Cole Porter, ”I am mad about Night and Day.” Millions of others throughout the world have been ”mad about” that Porter gem, as well as dozens of others, including, to name just a few, Begin the Beguine, From This Moment On, It’s De-Lovely, Just One of Those Things, Love for Sale, and My Heart Belongs to Daddy. Cole Porter (1891-1964) set new standards for popular song-writing, and his lyrics and melodies are as bright and sophisticated t...
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Cole Porter (2000)

This richly told biography reveals the private and public life of one of the most important and beguiling composer/lyricists of the century -- the incomparable Cole Porter, whose songs were the essence of wit and sophistication and whose life was marked by tragedy, courage, sorrow, and secrecy.
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Judy Garland: Beyond the Rainbow (2000)

Morley and Leon's profusely illustrated overview of the singer-actress beloved as much for her pathetic life as for her performances has the signal virtue of acknowledging her core fandom--gay men. Garland's appeal to gay men quite possibly arose out of her love, however misplaced, for her improvident and alcoholic as well as homosexual father. One very close friend was a gay man, two of her five husbands were homosexual, and she urged her daughter Liza to marry the homosexual Peter Allen. Compl...
Judy Garland: Beyond the Rainbow Cover
Colored Lights: Forty Years of Words and Music, Show Biz, Collaboration, and All That Jazz (2004)

Composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb are the longest-running song-writing partnership in Broadway history, having first joined forces in 1962. The creators of such groundbreaking musicals as Chicago, Cabaret, and Kiss of the Spider Woman, Kander and Ebb have helped to push American musical theater in a more daring direction, both musically and dramatically. Their impact on individual performers has been great as well, starting with the handpicked star of their first musical: an untested ni...
Colored Lights: Forty Years of Words and Music, Show Biz, Collaboration, and All That Cover
As Thousands Cheer: The Life Of Irving Berlin (1996)

A look at the life and prolific career of one of America's most successful songwriters.
As Thousands Cheer: The Life Of Irving Berlin Cover
The Complete Phantom of the Opera (1991)

Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Phantom of the Opera has been a smash hit worldwide. Now, here is the definitive account of this theatrical masterpiece, tracing the Phantom legend from its origins in historical fact through numerous artistic incarnations to the present day. The book includes the complete libretto and many specially commissioned color photographs of the production.
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Theatre Tales (Pre-Andrew Lloyd Webber) (2001)

It is widely believed that if you mention anything to an actor that happened more than twenty years ago, he or she will either laugh or cry. The point being that events in the show business tend to attain a larger than life quality, at least to the participants, either sadder or funnier than they would be if normal people were involved. I have earned a precarious living in various facets of the profession for nearly forty years, while observing, with wonder, these often bizarre moments. It seeme...
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Cats: Vocal Selections (1983)

This outstanding collection features ten top songs from Andrew Lloyd Webber's beloved musical: The Ad-dressing of Cats * Bustopher Jones: The Cat About Town * Gus: The Theatre Cat * Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats * The Journey to the Heavyside Layer * Memory * Mr. Mistoffelees * Old Deuteronomy * The Old Gumbie Cat * Skimbleshanks: The Railway.
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Fanfare: Unauthorized Biography of Andrew Lloyd Webber (1990)

A biography of Andrew Lloyd Webber, this book looks at his bohemian upbringing, his relationships with his brother and Tim Rice and his application of classical training to the world of pop music. The author has also written "In For a Penny: the Unauthorized biography of Jeffrey Archer".
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Cats on a Chandelier: The Andrew Lloyd Webber Story (1999)

From Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat to Cats and the Phantom of the Opera, Andrew Lloyd Webber aims to please. On top of being a composing genius, Lloyd Webber produces, and owns and runs his own company. Cats on a Chandelier is the complete story of this controversial man. Through personal conversation, Michael Coveney is able to bring us an intimate look into the life of a man who has perhaps changed musical theatre forever.
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Requiem: Vocal Score (1985)

Andrew Lloyd Webber's Requiem is a requiem mass written in memory of the composer's father, William Lloyd Webber, who died in 1982. Many thought it a surprising turn for such a populist composer as Lloyd Webber to produce a piece of "serious" music, being his first and to date only full-blown classical work. The music mixes Lloyd Webber's melodic and pop-oriented style with more complex, sophisticated and (at times) even austere forms. Lloyd Webber himself called the Requiem "the most personal o...
Requiem: Vocal Score Cover
Andrew Lloyd Webber: A Biography (1985)

A Biography of the great contemporary composer. Lloyd Webber has achieved great popular success in musical theatre, and has been referred to as "the most commercially successful composer in history." Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of variations, two film scores, and a Latin Requiem Mass. He has also gained a number of honours, including a knighthood in 1992 followed by a peerage from ...
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Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber: The New Musical (2001)

"The New York Times called Stephen Sondheim "the greatest and perhaps best known artist in the American musical theater." The same paper referred to his contemporary, Andrew Lloyd-Webber, as "the most commercially successful composer in history." Whatever their individual achievements might be, it is agreed by most critics that these two colossi have dominated world musical theater for the last quarter century and hold the key to the direction the musical stage will take in the future." "Beginn...
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Andrew Lloyd Webber - Now & Forever (2003)

The king of contemporary theatre, the ever-innovative Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber is the most successful composer of musicals of his generation. Featuring his best-loved compositions as well as titles that have never before appeared in print - with commentary on the new songs - this P/V/G collection of 60 songs from Webber's 5-CD boxed set is an essential compendium of his work. Includes: All I Ask of You * Any Dream Will Do * Don't Cry for Me Argentina * I Don't Know How to Love Him * Memory * The ...
Andrew Lloyd Webber - Now & Forever Cover
Andrew Lloyd Webber Anthology (1988)

An exquisite collection of Andrew Lloyd Webber's work from eight different stage productions. Features 27 of his greatest songs, including: I Don't Know How to Love Him * Don't Cry for Me Argentina * Memory * Unexpected Song * Pie Jesu * Only You * The Phantom of the Opera * more.
Andrew Lloyd Webber Anthology Cover
The Musicals of Andrew Lloyd Webber (1995)

Andrew Lloyd Webber has become the most successful composer in the world's history, earning respect with musicals like Phantom of the Opera and Joseph and His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. The author surveys the panorama of this giant of the musical theater, telling the story of his life and works by focusing on each of his musicals. 150 color and b&w photos.
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The Essential Andrew Lloyd Webber Collection (1998)

This outstanding collection features 41 songs from his best loved productions: All I Ask of You * Any Dream Will Do * As If We Never Said Goodbye * Don't Cry for Me Argentina * I Don't Know How to Love Him * Memory * The Music of the Night * The Phantom of the Opera * Pie Jesu * Starlight Sequence * Superstar * Think of Me * Too Much in Love to Care * Unexpected Song * more.
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Andrew Lloyd Webber: His Life and Works (1989)

In Andrew Lloyd Webber Michael Walsh offers a detailed biography of the composer of Evita and Cats. He chronicles the triumphs and tragedies of Lloyd Webber's Sunset Boulevard, Whistle Down the Wind, the film version of Evita, his third marriage, and the financial upheaval at The Really Useful Company, Lloyd Webber's production group. Walsh attempts to hack through the mass of Fleet Street sensationalism and get at what is really happening in the life of this talented, troubled man. The book off...
Andrew Lloyd Webber: His Life and Works Cover
The Rodgers & Hammerstein Collection (Piano/Vocal) (2002)

It's a grand collection fit for two of the most influential and successful composers of the modern era! This folio presents 70 songs from 11 of their blockbusters, complete with background information on each show and a great bio of this famous team. It also features an index by show and an alphabetical song title index. Songs include: Bali Ha'i * The Carousel Waltz * Climb Ev'ry Mountain * Dites-Moi (Tell Me Why) * Do-Re-Mi * Edelweiss * A Fellow Needs a Girl * Getting to Know You * A Hundred M...
The Rodgers & Hammerstein Collection (Piano/Vocal) Cover
Overture and Finale: Rodgers and Hammerstein and the Creation of Their Two Greatest Hits (1999)

In this tale of the most phenomenal collaboration in Broadway history - that of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II - Overture and Finale revisits the creation of their two most beloved hits: Oklaboma!, their first show together, and The Sound of Music, their last. Full of eyewitness accounts based on interviews with people involved in the original productions, Overture and Finale makes the reader present at the creation of these Rodgers & Hammerstein hits. Among the illustrations there ar...
Overture and Finale: Rodgers and Hammerstein and the Creation of Their Two Greatest H Cover

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