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Carousel

The original production of Carousel was directed by Rouben Mamoulian and opened at Broadway's Majestic Theatre on April 19, 1945, running for 890 performances and closing on May 24, 1947. From this show came the hit musical numbers "The Carousel Waltz" (an instrumental), "If I Loved You", "June Is Bustin' Out All Over", and "You'll Never Walk Alone."

Carousel was also revolutionary for its time — adapted from Ferenc Molnar's play Liliom, it was one of the first musicals to contain a tragic plot; it also contained an extended ballet that was crucial to the plot, and several extended musical scenes containing both sung and spoken material, as well as dance. The 1956 film version of Carousel, made in Cinemascope 55, again starred Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones, the same leads as the film version of Oklahoma!

Carousel is also unique among the Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals for not having an overture; both the stage and film versions began with the familiar Carousel Waltz. This music was included in John Mauceri's Philips Records CD of the complete overtures of Rodgers and Hammerstein with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra. It was also included in Rodgers' rare 1954 album for Columbia Records with the composer conducting the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.

Ferenc Molnar's Hungarian-language drama, Liliom, premiered in Budapest in 1909. The audience was puzzled by the work, and it lasted only thirty-odd performances before being withdrawn, the first shadow on Molnar's successful career as a playwright. Liliom was not presented again until after World War I. When it reappeared on the Budapest stage, it was a tremendous hit.


Except for the ending, the plots of Liliom and Carousel are very similar. Andreas Zavocky (nicknamed Liliom, the Hungarian word for "lily", a slang term for "tough guy"), a carnival barker, falls in love with Julie Zeller, a servant girl, and they begin living together. With both discharged from their jobs, Liliom is discontented and contemplates leaving Julie, but decides not to do so on learning that she is pregnant. A subplot involves Julie's friend Marie, who has fallen in love with Wolf Biefeld, a soldier—after the two marry, he becomes the owner of the hotel he once worked in.

Desperate to make money so that he, Julie and their child can escape to America and a better life, Liliom conspires with lowlife Ficsur to commit a robbery, but it goes badly, and Liliom stabs himself. He dies, and his spirit is taken to heaven's police court. As Ficsur suggested while the two waited to commit the crime, would-be robbers like them do not come before God himself. Liliom is told by the magistrate that he may go back to Earth for one day to attempt to redeem the wrongs he has done to his family, but must first spend sixteen years in a fiery purgatory.

On his return to Earth, he encounters his daughter, Louise, who like her mother is now a factory worker. Saying that he knew her father, he tries to give her a star he stole from the heavens. When Louise refuses to take it, he strikes her. Not realizing who he is, Julie confronts him, but finds herself unable to be angry with him. Liliom is ushered off to his fate, presumably Hell, and Louise asks her mother if it is possible to feel a hard slap as if it was a kiss. Julie reminiscently tells her daughter that it is very possible for that to happen.

In the summer of my Junior year in High School (summer of 1970), I worked with a summer stock theater that produced the stage version of Carousel. We actually built a working model carousel that held six actors. During the opening scene, three husky football players were ‘employed’ to turn the carousel while the 6 actors took their positions on the carousel horses. Give those football players credit-they pushed the offense back twenty yards, but in the process, lost one performer (while she was on the backstage side) so that when the carousel spun, there was one less rider! She was thrown off her horse! Oh, the fun of summer theater!

I still enjoy hearing the music from this production, probably because I sang in the chorus as well as did some of the backstage production work.

Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts 6–12 (CAPA) is a magnet school located in the Cultural District of Downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. CAPA is one of four 6th to 12th grade schools in the Pittsburgh Public Schools. It is the result of a merger between CAPA High School and Rogers CAPA Middle School.

CAPA offers students six art majors: visual arts, literary arts, theater, instrumental music, vocal music, and dance. The theater major includes traditional theater, musical theater, technical theater, and costume design. Arts classes are taught by adjunct faculty who are working professionals in their respective fields.

Admission is by portfolio or audition. It also offers a complete range of academic studies including Pittsburgh Scholars Program (PSP) and Centers for Advanced Study (CAS), along with activities like the National Honor Society, Tri-M Music Honor Society, National Art Honor Society, yearbook, newspaper, student council, Amnesty International, Model United Nations, the American Mathematics Competitions and North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad, and ski club.

CAPA opened in September 1979 with just 35 students and it was housed in Baxter Elementary School in the Homewood neighborhood. The school moved into its current space at Ninth Street and Fort Duquesne Boulevard at the beginning of the 2003–2004 school year.

The 9-story, 175,000-square-foot (16,300 m2) building is a world-class facility that includes a 400-seat auditorium, a black box theater, an art gallery, media arts center, television studio, fitness center, computer labs, and special rehearsal spaces for all the departments. This new location allows students to study their crafts in the hub of Pittsburgh's cultural center and to easily collaborate with working artists from across the city, region, state, and country. Pittsburgh CAPA has just become one of four 6–12 schools in Pittsburgh, collaborating with Rogers CAPA 6–8.