14 days ago

Leonard Bernstein - 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Broadway Musical 1976 (part 1)
The first part of the Broadway fiasco of Leonard Bernstein, hope you like it the audio quality is not great, it was a theater recording.

When the musical opened for tryouts in Philadelphia on February 26, 1976, it disappointed and angered audiences and received nearly unanimously negative reviews. Before its next round of tryouts at the National Theatre in Washington, DC, Lerner and Bernstein worked desperately to salvage the show, but despite all their tireless revisions and the eff orts of a new director and choreographer, by the time 1600 made it to Broadway, it was unanimously dismissed as a “tremendous flop.” The company gave only seven official performances at the Mark Hellinger Theatre on Broadway, May 4–8, 1976, before the show closed, losing its entire investment. Bernstein and Lerner, who expressed great disappointment in their failure, withdrew the work from their catalogs, and it was not performed again until after both of them had died.

Critics in 1976 agreed that 1600 failed largely because of its incoherent narrative and bitter tone. Many praised Bernstein's score, but they found the show as a whole confusing and heavy-handed, pointing to Lerner's book as the main problem. It lacked logical dramatic flow and sagged under the weight of trying to comment on too many social issues without inspiring enough emotional involvement with the characters. Rather than providing an uplifting musical history of the American presidency, it preached relentlessly on racial inequality and political hypocrisy.
By
Elissa Harbert

0:00 01. Overture
5:00 02. Opening Scene
8:02 03. Rehearse
12:05 04. If I Were A Dove
14:54 05. Playoff
15:06 06. Lud Meets Mrs. Adams
16:37 07. On Ten Square Miles Of The Potomac River
21:02 08. Ten Square Miles
21:42 09. Arriving At The House
24:07 10. Welcome Home, Miz Adams
26:39 11. Looking Over The House
29:26 12. Take Care Of This House
33:56 13. First Invitation
35:15 14. Lud's Letter
35:56 15. The President Jefferson March
40:29 16. Little Lud Meets Himself
42:52 17. Second Invitation
44:44 18. Seena
47:54 19. Invasion Of Washington
49:57 20. Sonatina (Part 1)
54:24 21. Sonatina (Part 2)
58:00 22. Four Walls
01:00:41 23. Lord, Please Come To Our Wedding
01:02:10 24. Lud's Wedding
01:06:41 25. Third Invitation
01:12:45 26. The Monroviad
01:17:02 27. The President Jefferson March (reprise)
01:17:42 28. Fourth Invitation
01:19:48 29. We Must Have A Ball