|
''White Horse Inn'' is the title of the Broadway version of the operetta ''Im weißen Rößl''.〔(IBDB Internet Broadway Data Base ), accessed 18 January 2015〕 The original operetta by Erik Charell and composers Ralph Benatzky and Robert Stolz was based on the popular farce of the same name by Oscar Blumenthal and Gustav Kadelburg. It was premiered at Berlin's Grosses Schauspielhaus on 8 November 1930 and ran for 416 performances. The Broadway version was premiered on 1 October 1936 at the Center Theatre in New York City. It had a libretto by David Freedman and lyrics by Irving Caesar. The original score was re-orchestrated by Hans Spialek. ==Background== ''White Horse Inn'' opened in New York on 1 October 1936, at the Center Theatre. In 1931, Jacob Wilk, executive for Warner Brothers Films, had approached Erik Charell with regard to a possible American production of ''White Horse Inn''. But it was not until February 1936 that the ''New York Times'' finally disclosed that a triumvirate of producers - Rowland Stebbins, Warner Brothers and the Rockefellers - would present ''White Horse Inn''. “Such delay was due to the depression shortage of investment capital for large scale musicals, and a reluctance to mount Graham's translation, penned in an ‘old-fashioned operetta' style”. Rather than Americanizing Harry Graham's UK script, Charell produced an all-new, all-American adaptation of the German text and lyrics. Broadway audiences preferred musical comedy rather than nostalgic operetta and that was what Charell intended to offer. In the opinion of Richar C. Norton, Broadway's ''White Horse Inn'' is “closer to the Berlin version in its farcical style”. David Freedman was ultimately contracted to prepare the new American libretto. At the time of his signing, he was one of the best known radio script writers. Irving Caesar was in charge of the lyrics. "Freedman's script is more contemporary and playful than Harry Graham's language in the London's version. The interpolations to the musical score and Irving Caesar's lyrics are equally modern”. The whole score was freshly orchestrated by Hans Spialek. Scenery and costumes were designed by Professor Ernst Stern. Richard Watts stated in the ''Herald-Tribune'': "A beautiful colorful and sufficiently lively show...It is my private opinion that ''White Horse Inn'' is several times livelier than the previous European spectacle ''The Great Waltz'', and at least as handsome". ''White Horse Inn'' closed on Saturday, 10 April 1937, after 221 performances. In late March, according to ''The New York Times'', the production had posted a profit in 25 out of 28 weeks of its run. As in London, the basic narrative structure of the German original remained intact, but many more musical numbers were dropped or replaced. Characters' names and much of the topical humor were Americanized. Charell presented a cartoon-like Austrian emperor Franz Josef as a deus-ex-machina who restores happiness to all. His arrival in St Wolfgang gave Charell the opportunity to pull out all the stops and offer a spectacle of color. “If the original German Giesecke’s character became purely comic transposed to London with its Hercules combination and Shirt-o-pants underwear, Freedman in the USA offered a sexier alternative with ladies’ swimwear and his “Lady Godiva” suit, which would have made the girls appear naked, with buttons down the front” argues Richard C. Norton. This ensured that this Alpine romp was far from old-fashioned, but instead “an erotic spectacle that left audiences gasping”. As a librettist, Freedman was known as a writer of racy revue sketches for the Ziegfeld Follies. American shows were not bound by cinema's production code introduced in 1934. Indeed Broadway shows of the decade were arguably sexier than film as a means of attracting a more sophisticated audience who could afford theatre ticket prices, whereas film from 1934 onwards was sanitized for a national, mid-west and more conservative, viewership. On the other hand, as Richard Clarke states, some aspects had to be adapted for the more puritan American audiences, taking into account the context. The Nazis were not amused to see Aryan culture mixed with so called ‘Nigger Jazz’ by a group of theatre people who were not only mostly Jewish but also homosexual (Benatzky excepted on both counts). They considered ''Im weissen Rössl'' scandalous, especially the Esther Williams-style swimming pool scene in which the near-naked girls and boys emerged from the water ballet in a grand dance routine. For that reason, the bathing scene was not allowed and had to be changed, in order to tone down the nudity. In the same way, the homosexual aspects in general were erased for American audiences. Regarding the music, many jazz elements of the original were adapted, so that the modern aspects were reduced for a more folkloristic version. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「White Horse Inn (Broadway version)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|