Sarah Wright Videos : Wright & Forrest (add. from Alexander Borodin) - Kismet (1953) - "Stranger in Paradise"

borodin classical opera musical operetta wright forrest add from alexander kismet 1953 stranger in paradise

Wright & Forrest (add. from Alexander Borodin) - Kismet (1953) - "Stranger in Paradise"

PS I used corresponding articles from the site "allmusic.com" to provide a more thorough history of the piece. Painting: "El Rio de Luz" by Frederic Edwin Church. History: Robert Wright and George Forrest met in high school and immediately formed a lifelong partnership that would take them both to Hollywood and to Broadway. Their chosen style is unusual, to say the least, and yet quite endearing: adaptations of classical music to Broadway: "Song of Norway" (1944), for instance, worked the music of Grieg around a fictitious account of the composer's life (the show proved to be one of the duo's earliest hits). After several subsequent scores failed to attain any kind of lasting success Wright and Forrest turned to the lure of legendary Baghdad, by turning Knoblock's play, "Kismet" (already made into two films by that time), into an operetta, using the music of the Russian composer, Alexander Borodin. This curious mixture turned out to be a quite successful one: "Kismet" was premiered by the Los Angeles-San Francisco Light Opera Company on August 17, 1953, in an opulent production by Edwin Lester which moved to Broadway on December 3, opening at the Ziegfeld Theater. Though a newspaper strike delayed the news, the musical became a resounding success, playing for 583 performances and taking a Tony in 1954 for Outstanding Musical, before moving on to London for an even more successful run. The show's genesis marked both the peak and the beginning of the end for Wright and ...

Video Credit: