Golden Apple / B.C.R.
Two CD set. Featuring nearly 90 minutes of previously unrecorded music and the complete libretto, PS Classics' deluxe cast recording of The Golden Apple gives new life to a musical milestone of the American theatre. When it premiered in 1954, composer Jerome Moross and librettist John Latouche's The Golden Apple was hailed as "the most original musical since Oklahoma!" (The Washington Post), "the best thing that has happened in and to the theatre in a very long time" (New York Daily News), and "a magnificent achievement. A sensational success. The most imaginative work of it's kind" (New York Daily Mirror). It's blend of American folklore and Greek myth, popular entertainment and high art, and musical comedy and operatic drama "stood Manhattan on it's ear," winning the New York Drama Critics' Circle prize for Best Musical (the first Off-Broadway show to do so) and spawning the standard "Lazy Afternoon." Yet, sadly, this 135-minute through-sung musical was preserved only in a 48-minute LP, and after a short-lived transfer to Broadway, THE GOLDEN APPLE all but slipped into obscurity. In November of 2014, the Lyric Stage of Irving, Texas, mounted a fully-staged revival of The Golden Apple, featuring an orchestra of 38 and a 43-member cast, and PS Classics was there to preserve the score in it's entirety.