Alan Menken, Howard Ashman - Disney's Beauty And The Beast: The Broadway Musical - Original Broadway Cast Recording (Blisterpack)
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Artist: Alan Menken, Howard AshmanEdition: Music CD
Format: Soundtrack
CD Release Date: 1994-04-26
Music Label: Uni/Disney/Blisterpack
Free Music Notes for Disney's Beauty And The Beast: The Broadway Musical - Original Broadway Cast Recording (Blisterpack)
Free Music Review: great story, great music
Hit: 5 Stars
I hate to admit it, but I used to abuse my CD's. I'm trying to change that though.
Anyway, my first copy of this CD was SO scratched that I could only listen to a few of the songs without skipping, or some other such interferance.
So, I decided to get another copy of this great show, and I realize I should have done so a few years ago.
Now every time I listen to this, I just get swept up into the story and the music, and I don't have to worry about which songs I can listen to and how long I can a listen to a certain song before the skipping gets too bad.
Absolutely wonderful.
Disney's Beauty And The Beast: The Broadway Musical - Original Broadway Cast Recording (Blisterpack) Poster
Way back in 1991, many of us saw the single-handed salvation and revival of the old-fashioned American-style Broadway musical comedy. True, it was in the form of a feature-length Disney cartoon, but Beauty and the Beast had it all: a wonderful, tuneful score (including a huge hit title-song), off-the-wall choreography, a great opposites-attract love story with an ultimately happy ending, comic subplots, colorful period costumes, a romantic location in small-town France, and an irresistible cast, including Angela Lansbury as the voice of a teapot. Alan Menken's songs, with lyrics by Howard Ashman and Tim Rice, literally introduced the characters ("Belle" and "Gaston") and carried them gracefully through the old fairy tale with its new animated twists. Disney understandably decided to transpose this cinematic miracle to the Broadway stage in 1992. Beauty and the Beast at the fabled Palace Theatre has done as much as anything to revive New York's theatre district; it led to a similar animated film-to-stage transfer of The Lion King, which allowed for the magnificent restoration of the 1902 New Amsterdam Theatre, which was the cornerstone of the cleanup of 42nd Street, which in turn transformed Times Square and "Broadway" into the world's number-one tourist destination. And we're all terribly grateful. But, on stage, Beauty and the Beast was flat, and most of that lack of fizz is, alas, captured on compact disc. The good songs are all here, such as "Be Our Guest," but the performances of them are mostly perfunctory--the exception being the vocal renderings of Susan Egan as Belle, the Beauty. Further, the Disneyfication of the Broadway musical seems to extend to faceless and interchangeable (read: cheap to hire) players, a practice that extends to The Lion King. The only "names" in the original Beauty and the Beast cast were Beth Howland as the teapot and Tom Bosley, a mere shadow of his former Fiorello, as Belle's father. Even worse, unlike The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast was not reinvented for the stage. It's my theory that the kids who made up the live audience (and many of their parents) were filling in the blanks from repeated viewings of the cartoon on video. If you're willing to do the same when only listening, this CD might do. But why, when the movie soundtrack album is available? --Robert WindelerBroadway & Vocalists Music CDs
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