A Night at the Musicals

Tonight's programme opens with one of the most irresistible pieces in the comic opera repertoire. The Pirates of Penzance premiered on New Year's Eve 1879 in New York — the only Gilbert and Sullivan opera to have its official world premiere in America — and has barely left the stage since. The story follows Frederic, a young man who discovers, to his great inconvenience, that having been born on the 29th of February, he technically comes of age only once every four years, leaving him bound to a band of tender-hearted pirates for several decades longer than he had hoped.

Let this overture open the evening for you with all the energy and wit that Gilbert and Sullivan do best — tuneful, playful, and impossible to sit still to. Sullivan finished it at five in the morning on the day he had to deliver it to the orchestra. That evening he wrote in his diary: "Went into the orchestra more dead than alive, but got better when I took the stick in my hand. Fine reception. [The] Piece went marvelously well. Grand success." A very good argument for working under pressure.

Rodgers and Hammerstein's 1949 musical South Pacific is set on a tropical island during World War II, centred on two love stories — American Navy nurse Nellie Forbush, who falls for a French planter named Emile de Becque, and a young lieutenant who falls for Liat, a Tonkinese girl he knows he could never bring home. Beneath the romance, the show grapples seriously with racial prejudice, which was bold and somewhat controversial for its time. It won ten Tony Awards and the Pulitzer Prize.

"Some Enchanted Evening" is sung by Emile early in the show — a meditation on love at first sight, on that inexplicable, instant certainty you feel when you see a stranger across a crowded room and somehow know your lives are about to change. It is a song about the courage love requires — to cross the room, to take the chance, and never let go — and it arrives before that courage has truly been tested. What follows in the story will put everything it promises to the test.

The Wizard of Oz is a 1939 MGM film following Dorothy Gale, a young girl from the grey flatlands of Kansas who is swept up by a tornado into the magical, colourful land of Oz. There she sets off down the yellow brick road to find the mysterious Wizard, making unlikely friends along the way — a scarecrow, a tin man, and a cowardly lion — each searching, like Dorothy, for something they feel is missing. It is a story about longing, wonder, and the eventual discovery that what we seek was never so far away after all.

Dorothy sings it early in the film, before the adventure begins — a quiet moment on the farm where she dreams of somewhere brighter, somewhere troubles melt away, somewhere the colours of a rainbow might actually be within reach. It is a simple wish, and that simplicity is the secret of its power.

What neither Dorothy nor anyone watching in 1939 could have known was that this small, quiet song would go on to outgrow the film entirely — you may have heard it in Judy Garland's timeless original, in Israel Kamakawiwoʻole's gentle ukulele version drifting through the Hawaiian backdrop of 50 First Dates, or sung at memorials and benefit concerts the world over by people who may never have seen the film at all. All of this makes it all the more remarkable that the song came breathtakingly close to never existing in our lives at all. Before the release, the MGM executives decided to cut it, convinced it would slow the picture down. It was associate producer Arthur Freed who fought to keep it in, and to whom we owe the gift of having this song at all.

Some shows need an introduction. The Sound of Music is not one of them. Rodgers and Hammerstein's 1959 masterpiece has seeped so deeply into our lives that its melodies feel less like songs we learned and more like songs we have always known — hummed in kitchens, sung in school halls, whistled without thinking on a quiet afternoon.

Tonight's medley is an invitation to travel back to whenever you first fell in love with this show — whether in a cinema, a living room, or a theatre — and revisit some of its most beloved songs. From the sweeping alpine openness of the title song to the gentle warmth of Edelweiss, from the bright and playful Do Re Mi to the bittersweet So Long, Farewell.

We hope they bring back a smile — and perhaps remind you just how beautifully crafted these songs really are.

Oliver! is Dickens' Oliver Twist set to music — the story of a workhouse orphan in Victorian London who escapes, falls in with a gang of child pickpockets run by the loveable rogue Fagin, and is caught between the criminal underworld and the chance of a better life. Nancy, Fagin's associate and girlfriend of the brutal Bill Sikes, becomes Oliver's unlikely protector — and pays for it with her life. The musical lightens much of Dickens' darkness, but Nancy's story remains its tragic heart. Bart wrote the book, music, and lyrics for what became one of the most successful British musicals ever written — a West End record-breaker, a Broadway hit, and a six-Oscar film.

Nancy sings this just after being roughed up by Bill Sikes, and it is not quite a love song. It is a declaration of loyalty to a man who hurts her, part devotion and part self-deception — convincing herself as much as confessing. The melody builds from quiet restraint to an almost defiant climax, rooted in the British torch song tradition: direct, unadorned, and emotionally raw.

My Fair Lady, which opened on Broadway in 1956, follows Eliza Doolittle, a cockney flower girl taken under the wing of the irascible phonetics professor Henry Higgins, who bets that he can polish her accent and manners enough to pass her off as a duchess in high society. Based on George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, it is a battle of wills, a comedy of class, and a love story all at once — and it has been enchanting audiences ever since.

Together, the two songs remind us why My Fair Lady endures: it takes grand themes of class and transformation and roots them in moments of feeling that anyone can understand.

1. "I Could Have Danced All Night"

   Eliza, having finally cracked the pronunciation that Higgins has been drilling into her for weeks, finds herself too alive and elated to sleep. She can't quite name what she's feeling — and the song captures that perfectly, that rare glow when something clicks and the whole world feels briefly, brilliantly possible.

2. "On the Street Where You Live"

   This song belongs to Freddy Eynsford-Hill, a young admirer utterly bewitched by Eliza. He knows she's inside a house somewhere nearby, and that's enough — he's happy just to linger on her street, breathing the same air. It's romantic to the point of silliness, and completely, recognisably real.

Carousel opened on Broadway in 1945, following the stormy romance between carousel barker Billy Bigelow and millworker Julie Jordan. It is a show of uncommon emotional depth — a love story shadowed by loss, guilt, and the longing for redemption — and Richard Rodgers considered it his finest work.

The song arrives at one of the show's darkest moments. After Billy's death, Julie's cousin Nettie sings it to the grieving Julie — a quiet, steady hand reaching through the darkness. It returns at the very end of the show, reprised at a graduation ceremony, where the now-invisible Billy silently encourages both Julie and their daughter to join in. A song that begins as private consolation swells, by the finale, into something closer to a communal hymn.

It is no surprise that the song has long outgrown the stage. Premiered in the final weeks of World War II, it spoke directly to a world in desperate need of hope. Since then it has been recorded by Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone, and countless others. In Liverpool, it became the anthem of the city's football club, sung by thousands of voices in unison on match days. Irving Berlin once said it had the same effect on him as the 23rd Psalm — and listening to it, it is not hard to understand why.

Bernstein's comic operetta Candide, based on Voltaire's 1759 satirical novella, premiered on Broadway in 1956 but closed after only 73 performances. The Overture, however, told a different story — when Bernstein conducted its first concert performance with the New York Philharmonic in January 1957, it became an instant sensation, performed by over thirty orchestras within two years and now one of the most popular American orchestral works of the 20th century. Like Voltaire's flashing wit deflating pompous philosophers, Bernstein wields laughter and musical brilliance as his weapon: a brassy fanfare opens this sparkling four-and-a-half minute showcase, racing through themes from the show including battle music and the lyrical "Oh Happy We," before climaxing with the glittering coloratura of "Glitter and Be Gay" — pure theatrical joy distilled into orchestral fireworks.

The Phantom of the Opera is based on Gaston Leroux's 1910 novel, set in the Paris Opera House. The Phantom — a disfigured musical genius — lives hidden in the labyrinth beneath the building, secretly tutoring a young chorus girl named Christine Daaé. He presents himself as the "Angel of Music," a spirit sent by her dead father, but he is very much alive, and dangerously obsessed. When Christine rises to stardom, she is caught between the Phantom's dark, possessive world and the offer of a normal life from Raoul, a childhood sweetheart who has reappeared in her life. The musical opened in London in 1986 with Sarah Brightman — Lloyd Webber's then-wife, for whom the entire role was written — as Christine and Michael Crawford as the Phantom. It went on to become the longest-running show in Broadway history.

This is Christine's Cinderella moment. During rehearsal for a fictional opera, the resident diva Carlotta storms off after a backdrop mysteriously crashes near her. The managers are about to cancel the show when someone suggests Christine. She begins tentatively, but the scene transitions from nervous rehearsal to that evening's full performance, her voice growing in confidence until she is soaring. Watching from a box in the audience, Raoul recognises the girl he once knew — and the Phantom's jealousy, and everything that follows, begins here.

Les Misérables began life in French. Lyricist Alain Boublil conceived the idea while watching a London production of Oliver! — the moment the Artful Dodger appeared onstage, he saw Gavroche, and the rest of Victor Hugo's characters followed. He partnered with composer Claude-Michel Schönberg, and their original production played to half a million people at the Palais des Sports in Paris in 1980. Five years later, producer Cameron Mackintosh brought it to London in a substantially expanded English version, with lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer — not a translation but a creative rewrite so extensive that Kretzmer later pointed out at least a third of the show hadn't existed before he got his hands on it. The London critics were savage: one called it "a witless and synthetic entertainment," another "a lurid Victorian melodrama." Audiences couldn't have cared less. Word of mouth filled the theatre, the show transferred to the West End, and it went on to become the longest-running musical in West End history, winning eight Tony Awards on Broadway and playing to over 130 million people worldwide.

This song did not exist in the French original. It was composed entirely new for the English production, written specifically for Colm Wilkinson — the Irish tenor who originated Jean Valjean in London — only seventeen days before the show opened.

It is the night before the final battle at the barricade. A group of student revolutionaries have defied an army ultimatum to surrender or die, and everyone knows what morning will bring. Among them is Marius — the young man Valjean's adopted daughter Cosette loves, and the closest thing Valjean has ever had to a son. As Marius sleeps, Valjean stands over him and prays: let this boy live; if someone must die, let it be me.

The song was almost something quite different. Kretzmer had been trying to write lyrics about Valjean's resentment toward this young man who was taking Cosette from him — but the melody Schönberg had given him, a hymn-like progression of three ascending notes, fought against every dark word. Then, at 2am, as the directors were leaving a late-night session, co-director John Caird said: "Sounds like a prayer to me." Every door flew open. Kretzmer stood in his study for the rest of that night, and by 5am the lyrics were finished. The reason the song sounds like a prayer is that it became one — and it has been one ever since, adopted around the world by military families, communities in grief, and anyone waiting for someone they love to come home safely.

West Side Story is modern Broadway's answer to Romeo and Juliet. In 1947, Bernstein, playwright Arthur Laurents, and choreographer Jerome Robbins first conceived a contemporary adaptation with Irish Catholic and Jewish families as the warring clans, but the collaboration fell apart. When they reunited in 1955, struck by the wave of youth gang violence sweeping New York, they reimagined it as a clash between white "Jets" and Puerto Rican "Sharks." When it premiered on Broadway in 1957, critics declared it the beginning of "a new age in the theater."

Bernstein fused classical techniques with jazz, Latin rhythms, and street energy to create what many consider the first truly American opera. The score is a masterclass in sophisticated composition disguised as popular music: "Cool" is written as a twelve-tone fugue, the entire score is unified by the characteristic tritone interval from "Maria," and beneath the infectious melodies lies diminished scales, complex counterpoint, and pitch-centric passages. Bernstein proved that Broadway audiences didn't need simplicity — they needed brilliance.

1. "America"

   Anita and the Shark girls debate whether life in America lives up to its promise. The song's irony cuts both ways: lyrics that simultaneously celebrate and mock the American dream, delivered in vibrant Latin style that asserts Puerto Rican identity even while debating assimilation. The characteristic alternating 6/8 and 3/4 rhythm pattern, Spanish guitar, and Latin percussion create a huapango that is both celebration and critique — joy and disillusionment dancing together.

2. "Tonight"

   The iconic balcony scene where Tony and Maria fall in love. This replaced an earlier, less effective attempt at the moment. Bernstein crafted one of musical theater's most recognizable love songs, its soaring melody building from the tritone motif that unifies the entire score.

3. "Mambo"

   The competitive dance at the gym where the Jets and Sharks vie for dominance — and where Tony and Maria first lock eyes across a crowded room. Bernstein's mambo pulses with Latin jazz energy and mounting tension, a musical powder keg exploding into the spark of forbidden love.

George Gershwin first read DuBose Heyward's novel Porgy in 1926 and stayed up all night finishing it, immediately seeing it as the foundation for the first great American opera — but postponing it due to other commitments. Finally, in the summer of 1934, he found himself a cottage on Folly Island, a remote barrier island near Charleston, South Carolina, and spent the summer immersed in the Gullah culture of the Low Country — attending prayer meetings on nearby James Island, listening to spirituals, and absorbing the rhythms and street cries of Charleston. Heyward recalled the prayer meetings vividly: a dozen voices weaving in and out of each other, building to a rhythmic crescendo he called "almost terrifying."

Gershwin called the result "an American folk opera." Porgy and Bess premiered on Broadway on October 10, 1935, with a classically trained, all-Black cast — a choice that was revolutionary then and remains remarkable today. But little about the work fitted neatly into the world it arrived in. Broadway fans found it too operatic; opera fans found the jazz and blues beneath them. It ran only 124 performances, and Gershwin died two years later, aged 38. He and Heyward (who died in 1940) never knew what they had written. It took decades for the world to catch up: a 1976 Houston Grand Opera revival restored Gershwin's complete original score for the first time, the opera entered the Metropolitan Opera repertoire in 1985, and today it is one of the most frequently performed American operas.

These are the first words the audience hears. Clara, a young mother in the waterfront community of Catfish Row, sings a lullaby to her baby on a hot Charleston evening. It sets the world of the opera before anything else happens: the heat, the tenderness, the fragility of life on these streets. Stephen Sondheim called Heyward's lyrics simply "the best in the musical theater." The song has since become one of the most recorded in history — over 33,000 covers across virtually every genre, from Billie Holiday to Miles Davis to Janis Joplin.

A friend of Gershwin's, Kay Halle, recalled coming home late one night to find him at her piano. He turned and said: "Sit down, I think I have the lullaby." She knew he'd been working through several versions that hadn't satisfied him. He sang "Summertime" in a high, wailing voice, and she remembered it as "exquisite."

The Producers is the ultimate theatrical joke: a comedy about making a comedy, a musical about staging a musical — specifically, the worst musical ever made. Two scheming Broadway producers plan to get rich by creating a guaranteed flop, only to discover that "Springtime for Hitler," their outrageously offensive Nazi musical, has become an accidental smash hit.

Brooks' 1968 film won him an Oscar and became a cult classic — one he was content to leave untouched for over three decades, until producer David Geffen finally convinced him to bring it to Broadway. The result was a phenomenon: 12 Tony Awards in 2001 and a six-year run. Brooks composed 17 new songs for the musical, and remarkably, he had no formal musical training — much of his composition was done by humming melodies into a tape recorder and having a musicologist transcribe them into music on paper. Nevertheless, his genius seems to shine through every outrageous lyric and infectious melody.