Each month, a libretto of an important early American musical in a variety of electronic formats, plus associated photographs, vocal scores, and the occasional audio file.

Musical of the Month: Golden Dawn Considered today, Golden Dawn is obviously problematic on multiple levels, and the lack of any revivals of the show is not necessarily a bad thing. However, the study of non-canonical works like Golden Dawn remains crucial to understanding the history of musicals.

Musical of the Month: Little Nemo Little Nemo opened on Broadway at the opulent New Amsterdam Theatre on October 20, 1908, after a three-week tryout in Philadelphia. According to the New York Times, the city had “seen nothing bigger or better in extravaganza than ‘Little Nemo.’” It had also never seen a theatrical production more expensive.

Musical of the Month: Rex A guest post by Sherman Yellen.

Musical of the Month: The Rothschilds A guest post by Sherman Yellen, bookwriter of The Rothschilds.

Musical of the Month: Tenderloin The show opened at the 46th Street (now the Richard Rodgers) Theater in October 1960 to mixed reviews and closed the following spring after only 271 performances. It has received respectful attention in performances off-Broadway and in City Center’s Encores! series, but has never been revived on Broadway. What exactly went wrong?

Jerry Bock's Demo Recordings: Fiddler on the Roof A few months ago, I posted three demo recordings of Fiorello! from the Jerry Bock recordings in the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound. This month, in honor of Fiddler's 50th anniversary, I am happy to share six demos of Fiddler on the Roof.

Musical of the Month: Fiddler on the Roof In the following blog post, Alisa Solomon examines three typescripts of Fiddler on the Roof that can be studied at the Library for the Performing Arts. Her book, Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof, is available to borrow.

Musical of the Month: Show Boat In the following blog post, Professor Todd Decker examines four of the early typescripts of Show Boat that can be studied at the Library for the Performing Arts. He uses the Library's call numbers to identify the four copies. There are two copies in box 5 of the Billie Burke/Florenz Ziegfeld papers, one of which was once separated from the papers under the classmark: RM7430. One is in our collection of older musical theater libretti (NCOF+) and other remains separate under classmark (RM7787). Digital images of all four copies, presented here with the kind permission of the rights

Sampler of Songs from "Are You With It?" Last December, Ben West, artistic director of UnsungMusicalsCo., wrote a guest Musical of the Month blog post to accompany both the first-ever publication of the libretto of Are You With It? and a remarkable reading performed in the Bruno Walter Auditorium at the Library for the Performing Arts. I enjoyed the reading so much that I immediately asked Ben if he would be willing to record part of the score with his incredibly talented cast. Given our almost non-existent budget, we could only record three songs (selected by Ben), but this little taste gives a tantalizing sense of this

Musical of the Month: The Body Beautiful Spoiler alert: The following blog reveals details about the plot of Rocky. If you’ve seen the movie, there are no surprises here, but if you haven’t seen it yet, go buy a ticket to the musical, and come back soon.

Jerry Bock's FIORELLO! Demos Original Cast of Fiorello! / Photo by Joseph AbelesWhen Jerry Bock died in 2010, his papers (drafts, correspondence, business records, etc.) came to the library as he had planned. A year or so later, his friend and lawyer, Richard Ticktin, compiled many of Bock's personal audio recordings onto a hard drive and passed a copy to the library. While we are still in the process of processing and preserving this material, I'm very excited today to share with you a preview of the treasures in this collection. Using the library's player below, you can listen to three tapes Bock made while

Musical of the Month: Fiorello! There’s a new mayor in town—a man from a party locked out of the Gracie Mansion for over a decade who ran on a platform opposing the establishment and promising to improve the lot of the city's poor and disenfranchised. Thus ends Fiorello!, the hit 1959 musical with a score by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick.

Announcing LIBRETTO! I am very pleased to announce the first release of Libretto, a prototype open source, ebook reader for reading musicals on Android devices!

Musical of the Month: Are You With It? A guest post by Ben West of UnsungMusicalsCo. The cast of Are You With It? (Photo by The Graphic House)November 1945. The New York Post calls it "a long-awaited musical comedy hit;" Universal purchases the film rights for more than $100,000; and The New York Times urges its readers to "hurry, hurry folks and get your tickets. On second thought, it probably isn't necessary to break a neck: this carnival should be hereabouts for a long time to come." If you've never heard of this raucous entertainment

Musical of the Month: Bless You All A guest post by Ben West of UnsungMusicalsCo. Between March 1946 and December 1948, six highly successful musical revues opened on Broadway, playing a combined total of 2,653 performances and marking a brief resurgence of the once fashionable form. The rapturous response to these half-dozen hits was quite likely the driving force behind the pack of ten new entries that stormed the scene in the three years that followed (1949-1951). However, with the exception of the Bert Lahr-Dolores Gray vehicle

Three Songs From Barefoot Boy With Cheek Photo by The Graphic House (Theater Photo Collection B)A guest post by Ben West of UnsungMusicalsCo. When I was approached about recording Barefoot Boy With Cheek, I jumped at the opportunity. Based on the best-selling novel by Tony Award nominee Max Shulman, the zany 1947 romp has quickly become one of my favorite musicals. Sidney Lippman and Sylvia Dee's score is top-drawer Broadway brass and Mr. Shulman's book is both endlessly witty and brilliantly constructed. Yet, the original George Abbott production never received a cast album. Barefoot Boy is truly an unsung musical. As

Musical of the Month: Barefoot Boy With Cheek Photo by The Graphic House (Theater Photo File B)A guest post by Ben West “A young alumnus of the University of Minnesota and an old hand from Harvard and Broadway have turned out a wonderfully amusing musical comedy called Barefoot Boy With Cheek. A horde of exuberant young singers, dancers and actors, all of them bursting with vigor and brimming with talent, bounced it around the stage of the Colonial Theatre last night and rolled the customers out into the aisles. It’s the newest of the hits and one of the happiest.”

Musical of the Month: The Fig Leaves Are Falling A guest post by Ben West. The Company (Photo by Dixie Sheridan)Strange as it may seem given its frank narrative and its traditional sound, The Fig Leaves Are Falling is not a conventional musical. This colorful, vivacious and disarmingly sweet 1969 confection is—at its core and in its construction—a unique and exciting entertainment that marvelously straddles the worlds of 1960s musical comedy and 1940s revue. It was, in fact, Fig Leaves'

Musical of the Month: Listen to Very Good Eddie I'll be posting a April's Musical of the Month later this week, but before I do, I wanted to share the results of a little experiment. I recently discovered a new music streaming subscription called Rdio which, for a monthly subscription fee (currently about $5), allows one unlimited access to all of the songs in their catalog. It's more or less the same idea as Spotify, but with one really cool feature for programmers: an open and easy to use API (application programming interface) for playing music within