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| The Light in the Piazza (2005 Original Broadway Cast) | 
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| Creators: Adam Guettel, Victoria Clark, Kelli O'hara, Matthew Morrison, Sarah Uriarte Berry, Mark Harelik
Label: Nonesuch
Category: Music
List Price: $19.98
Buy New: $13.93
You Save: $6.05 (30%)
New (36) Used (12) Collectible (1) from $7.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  112 reviews
Sales Rank: 3919
Format: Cast Recording
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 5 x 0.5
MPN: 79829
UPC: 075597982923
EAN: 0075597982923
ASIN: B0009A1AQE
Release Date: May 24, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: BRAND NEW, Factory Sealed items direct from the Studios. 30 Day Satisfaction Guarantee. Quick International Airmail!
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| Tracks:
| • | Overture | | • | Statues and Stories | | • | The Beauty Is | | • | Il Mondo Era Vuoto | | • | American Dancing | | • | Passeggiata | | • | The Joy You Feel | | • | Dividing Day | | • | Hysteria | | • | Say It Somehow | | • | Aiutami | | • | The Light in the Piazza | | • | Octet | | • | The Beauty Is (Reprise) | | • | Let's Walk | | • | Clara's Interlude | | • | Love to Me | | • | Fable |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
Like a shimmering pearl, The Light in the Piazza emerged from a sea of revivals, rehashings, and movie adaptations to secure 11 2005 Tony nominations, including Best Musical. Based on an Elizabeth Spencer novella (which was also made into a 1962 film), it follows a mother, Margaret (Victoria Clark), and her daughter, Clara (Kelli O'Hara), as they take a vacation to Italy. There, Clara and a young Italian (Matthew Morrison) fall in love, but Margaret is determined to keep them apart. The Light in the Piazza doesn't fit the model of most Broadway scores, with a splashy opener here, a swing number there, then the big ballad. The score is more of a unified whole, sometimes jarring, sometimes following the patterns of speech, and sometimes unfolding in glorious sheens of sound. (Heck, some of it's even in Italian!) In that sense, it's similar to another unconventional American musical set in Italy, Stephen Sondheim's Passion, which is more chamber opera than musical, and composer-lyricist Adam Guettel (song of Mary Rodgers, grandson of Richard Rodgers) seems the most likely heir apparent to Sondheim in the current generation of musical theater creators. O'Hara's voice soars in the score's most beautiful moments ("Say It Somehow," the title song), but Clark enjoys two exquisitely lyrical moments with "Dividing Day" and "Let's Walk." She was one of the show's six Tony winners (for Leading Actress), along with Guettel's score and the orchestrations, scenice design, lighting, and costumes, while O'Hara (for Featured Actress), Morrison, Craig Lucas's book, and Bartlett Sher's direction were also nominated. --David Horiuchi
Album Description
The Light in the Piazza is arguably one of the most highly anticipated theatrical events of the decade for serious Broadway theatergoers. The Los Angeles Times has already declared its creator, Nonesuch artist Adam Guettel, "a composer for the new century," on the strength of his two Off-Broadway productions, the 1996 Obie-Award winning "folk musical" Floyd Collins and the 1998 song cycle, Myths and Hymns, TIME has described him as "a startlingly original songwriter." Few theatrical composers have been watched as closely as Guettel, and few musicals in the course of their development have generated so much substantial press or been praised so highly on the road as The Light in the Piazza. Both the New Yorker and The New York Times magazine devoted in-depth coverage to the evolution of Guettel's sophisticated, deeply moving score. New Yorker critic John Lahr decided,"Guettel's kind of talent cannot be denied. He shouldn't change for Broadway; Broadway, if it is to survive as a creative theatrical force, should change for him."
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| Customer Reviews: Read 107 more reviews...
This is what musical theatre is about... May 24, 2005
69 out of 86 found this review helpful
When we have to suffer through a Broadway season that includes the likes of Dracula and Good Vibrations, The Light in the Piazza is HOPE. Adam Guettel's score is the best in YEARS, and this recording is breathtaking. While not perfect (some of the songs don't quite work and the lyrics can become a bit general), the music moves in such intricate and beautiful ways. The orchestrations (with great string parts and a little guitar sneaked in there) are BEAUTIFUL; sadly, no recording could give justice to the experience of hearing those orchestrations in the real space.
Plus, there are many noteworthy performances. Victoria Clark's voice has so much character and emotion, Kelli O'Hara just floats through those notes like it's nothing, and Matthew Morrison does such a great job with a difficult score that calls for him to sing an Italian aria, and it's so funny to think that this is the same guy who starred in Hairspray :)
The CD is a MUST HAVE; if you don't know Adam Guettel you need to get acquainted. He is the new voice of musical theatre.
 Mr. Guettel brings rare wonder to the musical stage! Superb! June 16, 2005
49 out of 58 found this review helpful
Adam Guettel's soaring melodies and passionate, romantic lyrics combine to make "The Light In The Piazza's" score one of the most stunning I have heard in ages. Mr. Guettel's work brings rare wonder to the musical stage. It almost belongs in a genre of its own. Certainly, his contemporary score is not recognizable in any of your mother's Broadway show tunes, nor is it quite opera. This extraordinary album, featuring the original cast, was released recently by Nonesuch Records. I immediately bought a CD and have listened to it repeatedly over the last weeks. Beautifully arranged and orchestrated by the composer, with Ted Sperling and Bruce Coughlin, the more you listen to "The Light In The Piazza," with its swirling sound of strings and harp, and slight dissonances, the more you want to hear.
Based on the novella by Elizabeth Spenser, the musical is set primarily in Florence, Italy, in the summer of 1953. Margaret Johnson, (Victoria Clark), is touring the Tuscan countryside with her daughter, Clara, ((Kelli O'Hara). While sightseeing, beautiful, young Clara meets Fabrizio Naccarelli, (Matthew Morrison), a handsome, spirited Florentine. Her hat is blown off by a gust wind and the young man recovers it for her. Fate sounds a chord, romance resonates. The protective Mrs. Johnson is determined to keep the two lovers apart. Clara is not all she appears to be at first glimpse, and her mother is finding this increasingly difficult to keep secret.
Silver-voiced, Mrs. Johnson, (the magnificent Ms.Clark), reflects on her empty marriage in the heartbreaking "Dividing Day," a song in the first act which is one of my favorites. Another major highlight is her poignant closing number, "Fable." Throughout, the music and lyrics eloquently articulate the actors' feelings. Kelli O'Hara's radiant version of "The Light in the Piazza" and the gorgeous love duet between O'Hara and Morrison, "Say It Somehow" provide absolutely memorable moments. The young couple struggle with a language barrier, and Mr. Morrison's receives my kudos for the way he communicates in broken English....and, of course, in song. His talent is so evident as his voice, time and time again, soars to the proverbial rafters. The CD offers some fantastic group numbers also.
I cannot write enough good things about this album. I can only promise that if you listen, and let the glorious music speak for itself, you will be more than satisfied.
JANA
 Good, but Mixed June 5, 2005
43 out of 50 found this review helpful
While I did not catch this show on a recent trip to NYC, I purchased the cd based on reviews and multiple Tony nominations. Musically, the score is beautiful and the cast's voices are terrific (esp. Clarke and O'Hara), but the lyrics don't quite live up to the rest. Standout tracks include: "The Beauty Is", "Dividing Day", and "Say It Somehow" (though the rambling "ah"s keep the song from perfection).
Overpraised June 6, 2005
39 out of 53 found this review helpful
There are lovely moments in this musical, the orchestrations are lush, the voices soaring and lyrical. Unfortunately, the music is simply not musical enough to deserve the praise given by some reviewers. (I must tell readers: one of the spotlight reviews, posted on the date of publication and gushingly hyperbolic, posted by a reviewer who has reviewed this CD alone and nothing else, seems obviously solicited by the creators or producer of the musical. The reader should beware of such tacky tactics.) There are a few beautiful songs in this musical, and they are far better than the run of the current Broadway mill. But many of the songs are dense and atonal, many of the lyrics are too inarticulate (even for English-challenged and childlike characters) to retain the listener's interest. Adam Guettel is definitely a talent, but as a whole, this musical is not on a consistently high level.
Eh.... July 6, 2005
39 out of 50 found this review helpful
Adam Guettel has often been described as the heir-apparent to the Sondheim throne--the next great artistic leader in musical theatre. It's always been my way of thinking that this title (as well as much of Guettel's success) stems more from his pedigree than it does from the merits of his actual work, which, if honestly appraised, tend to sit more like a modern-day enharmonic respelling of Lerner and Loewe than "the next Stephen Sondheim."
Lo and behold, as if to prove me right, out comes The Light in the Piazza. In fact, with little modification, the opening number (Statues and Stories) could easily have passed for a Loewe trunk song intended for his musical CAMELOT. The rest of the score, however, seems to owe more of its heritage to modern opera than theatre music. For example, musical interludes seem to go on a bit too long for Broadway convention, often approaching the 24 or 32 bar standard in opera. The plot is thin and improbable, like opera, and the characters are stock, like opera.
The lyrics here are distinctly "purple," meaning they are not only in love with themselves, and not only full of themselves, but in love with how full of themselves they are. In another nod to this piece's operatic roots, often the cast will just give up singing words altogether and settle in for 32 bars of ahhing, and I can't say I blame them if the alternative was singing more lyrics like "[referencing a nude statue] These are very popular in Italy/It's the land of naked marble boys/Something we don't see a lot in Winston Salem/That's the land of corduroys."
Perhaps the biggest complaint that I have of the score is that it operates on only two levels: excessively complicated and sparse. Harmonic lines seem to either be constantly moving, as if they are afraid to commit to single a note, or rhythmically deceptive, as if they were designed to intentionally conceal the downbeat. Though this works well in some numbers (the delightfully hysterical Hysteria), building a whole score around one technique, particularly when that technique leaves most of the score feeling like one giant recitativo accompagnato, is tiresome.
Perhaps just because of the variety, the score succeeds the most when it breaks from the constant barrage of sixteenth notes. At these moments (The Beauty Is, Say It Somehow), Guettel proves that he is very much capable of writing emotionally complicated music without that translating immediately into dissonant splatter painting on manuscript paper, but these moments are fleeting, and more often than not get undermined by the otherwise gorgeous orchestrations, which mistake the lull in the music as an excuse to have the strings demonstrate their tremolo work, or for the 'cellos to soar one time too many and unintentionally rip at the fabric of the music.
It also must be said that many of the numbers are in Italian. There is nothing wrong with this, and it is especially appropriate since part of the story focuses on the language barrier that exists for a American mother and daughter vacationing in Italy. At times, the broken English of the Italian characters can be rather charming (Passeggiata). I can even overlook (as I did with Guettel's other work FLOYD COLLINS) the uneven and sometimes disastrous accents coming from both the supposed residents of Winston Salem, NC, and Florence, Italy, but there is a certain measured arrogance in one of the evening's later songs, during which the composer employs a translator for his Italian lyrics, as if the audience suddenly got dumber since the last bit of unaided Italian in the show.
The cast's performances are strong, if disjointedly represented on the CD. They seem to be able to intuit the exact moments when Guettel's music loses the connection between heart and mind, and end up truly exploiting (and sometimes fixing) his music.
If I seem harsh in this review, it's only because I wanted to break up the monotony of effusive praise that drips from every other review here. I must confess that I still find this material mostly intriguing, and I would definitely not contest its rightful title as the best musical of the 04-05 Broadway season. I encourage anyone who reveres the artistic potential of musical theatre to buy this CD and dissect it for both the positives (which are enumerated in the 30 or so other reviews available here on this site) and the negatives.
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