(++++) AROUND AND AROUND WE GO

Rodgers & Hammerstein: Carousel. Nathaniel Hackmann, Mikaela Bennett, Sierra Boggess, Julian Ovenden, Francesca Chiejina, David Seadon-Young, Matthew Seadon-Young, Naomi Wakszlak; “Carousel” Ensemble and Sinfonia of London conducted by John Wilson. Chandos. $43.99 (2 SACDs).

     Just when everybody, including Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II themselves, knew that the duo could not possibly produce another success on the level of their first musical collaboration, Oklahoma!, along came Carousel and knocked everybody’s thinking for a loop. Several loops, in fact. The vast expansion of the Broadway musical’s musical environment that Oklahoma! represented was tied to what was, objectively speaking, a rather thin story line with basically formulaic characters – redeemed by a whole passel of utterly charming tunes. Even the dramatically necessary darkness, the ending with a death and its rapid dismissal, had something of a tacked-on feeling – none of which diminished the tremendous reception of Oklahoma! or reduced its impact by one iota. Its Pulitzer Prize was richly deserved.

     But then what? Rodgers and Hammerstein collaborated on the film musical State Fair in 1945, but what about a second stage musical? The answer turned out to be Carousel, a rather oddly named work whose title points to colorful gaiety and happy warm-weather family outings but whose plot is dark and is driven by complex and even unpleasant characters and their interactions. That makes it sound as if Carousel is an opera, and in fact it is the most operatic of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s nine stage musicals – and, oddly enough, the one whose music has been least familiar.

     Oklahoma! was the first musical to have an original-cast recording with the music in its original orchestrations – although not quite everything was included, as became clear when John Wilson and the Sinfonia of London produced the Chandos release of all the music in all the original Robert Russell Bennett orchestrations. But the gulf between what was thought of as “all the music” and what really is “all the music” is far greater for Carousel, whose original-cast recording runs 55 minutes but whose new Wilson-led two-SACD release lasts more than an hour and a half. That is indeed opera-length, and to say that this recording is revelatory is a vast understatement.

     Carousel is about life and the afterlife, death and what comes after for those left behind and (to some extent) those who have passed on. Even at full length, and as befits its themes, it has fewer intensely memorable, bright and bubbly songs than Oklahoma!, although June Is Bustin’ Out All Over and, in particular, You’ll Never Walk Alone are among the greatest of all Rodgers and Hammerstein creations. But what a complex and character-driven piece Carousel turns out to be – especially so with the excellently chosen lead singers in this recording, all of whom know how to use their lines (spoken as well as sung) to explore and delineate their characters and their sometimes muddled (and thus very human) motivations. Carousel is based on a 1909 play called Liliom by Hungarian dramatist Ferenc Molnár – the play’s title means “lily” and refers not only to the flower commonly associated with death and funerals but also, in Hungarian slang, means “tough guy” and thus applies to the play’s and musical’s antihero. Liliom is renamed Billy Bigelow for the musical, the action is moved from Budapest to Maine, and the play’s gloomy ending is given a hopeful tinge of uplift for the musical – a significant change that apparently even Molnár himself appreciated.

     The innovations that make Carousel so important in Broadway history, although largely taken for granted nearly 80 years later, have freshness and renewed power as shaped by Wilson and his cast of singer/actors. One of those is the lack of an overture – the opening scene, which visually introduces the characters, turns out to work very well even without visuals. Also crucial to the design of Carousel are an extended ballet that advances the stage action and, again, makes some fine dramatic points even as an audio-only presentation; and the remarkable eight-minute Soliloquy in which the largely unsympathetic Billy Bigelow is transformed into someone with depth and at least some minimal potential for good as he contemplates becoming a father. Even the less-known and heretofore virtually unknown material comes to life here, and the orchestrations – begun by Bennett but, because Bennett had other commitments, turned over to and almost fully handled by Don Walker – are highly effective, thanks in part to the decision to record this release in a theater rather than a concert hall so as to produce the auditory ambience that Carousel would have had for its initial audiences. It is worth pointing out that Carousel opened with an orchestra of 39 players – an exceptionally large complement (Oklahoma! had 28) and some three times the size of typical modern theater orchestras. Wilson’s use of the original-size orchestra, the full original score, and an assemblage of performers who thoroughly understand their roles and their characters’ place within the world of Carousel makes this recording an unequaled presentation of and tribute to the musical, its creative team, and the ability sometimes to move from an outstanding creation to one even more outstanding. It was the third Rodgers and Hammerstein stage collaboration, Allegro, that would turn out to be a letdown – but that is very definitely another story.