Cocktail Party Fact: Originally, Bernstein, Laurents and Robbins had planned on writing a musical about a Jewish girl and a Catholic boy who fall in love and face the opposition of their two cultures, to be called East Side Story. But with the new teenage unrest and the image of the teenage street gangs in [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: Instead of a regular Broadway rehearsal period and previews, Dreamgirls broke the rules in a big way. Bennett, hot on the heels of his masterpiece, A Chorus Line, put the show through four separate workshops and an unusually long pre-Broadway tryout in Boston, before bringing it to Broadway. [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: Considering how perfect the score is, it’s hard to believe that Irving Berlin was not the original composer chosen. He only got the job after Jerome Kern died. Berlin was so unsure that he insisted on writing two audition songs before accepting the assignment. The show was also responsible [...]

Active Years: 1898 - 1937
Position: American composer and brother of Ira Gershwin. Refered to as “Mr. Music” by his contemporaries.
Career Highlights: Lady Be Good (1924), Girl Crazy (1930), Porgy and Bess (1935).
Career Totals: 48 published works between 1913 and 1937, as well as 53 works with brother, Ira.
Scouting Report: Born to immigrant [...]

Active Years: 1882-1967
Position: American painter of works invoking solitude and isolation, in which architecture and light play distinctive framing roles.
Career Highlights: Early Sunday Morning, 1930 (Whitney Museum, New York); Nighthawks, 1942 (Art Institute, Chicago); Rooms by the Sea, 1951 (Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut); Carolina Morning, 1955 (Whitney Museum, New York).
Scouting Report: Hopper [...]

Active Years: 1585-1666
Position: Seventeenth century Dutch portrait painter, whose fame and influence in the history of Dutch painting is second only to Rembrandt.
Career Highlights: Banquet of the Officers of the St. George Civic-Guard Company, Haarlem, 1616 (Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem); The Laughing Cavalier, 1624 (Wallace Collection, London); Malle Babbe, 1630’s (Gemaldegalerie, Berlin); [...]

Active Years: 1791-1824
Position: French painter and lithographer who painted modern subjects at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Career Highlights: Charging Chasseur, 1812 (Louvre, Paris); Wounded Cuirassier Leaving the Field of Battle, 1814 (Louvre, Paris); Start of the Race of the Barberi Horses, 1817 (Walter’s Art Gallery, Baltimore); Raft of the Medusa, [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: The most famous melody from the opera, Norma’s prayer to the moon, “Casta Diva,” was altered by Bellini eight times before he molded it into its final form.
Here’s the plot: The action takes place in Gaul during the Roman occupation, around 50 B.C. Norma, the high priestess of the [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: The Magic Flute is not really an opera, but a Singspiel, with arias and ensembles separated by spoken dialogue instead of sung recitative.
Here’s the plot: Pamina, daughter of the Queen of the Night, has been kidnapped by Sarastro, the High Priest of Isis, who hopes to protect the Princess from her mother’s [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: The apocryphal story about the first movement’s da-da-da-dum theme representing “fate knocking at the door” is, for once in the world of musical legend, apparently true. Beethoven himself said so. The great German writer Goethe (of “Faust” fame) heard it and thought Beethoven was insane.
Commitment Factor: About 35 minutes
Vital Statistics: Classical Period [...]