"Some Enchanted Evening" - Ezio Pinza
From Original Cast Album
For about two and a half years I worked at a small, community dinner theatre. It was the type of place where there was never enough help – at the box office, building sets, making costumes, or on the stage. I did a little bit of everything, all the time. Every summer we performed three shows – two big musicals book-ending a much smaller, more intimate comedy or drama. Them were fun, but amazingly busy times.
It never failed that at some point during rehearsals for the big musicals, I would get a call.
"Brewster, how would you like to be an actor?"
There were never enough actors to fill out the chorus, and despite my rather unremarkable singing and acting ability, the director of the theatre needed me for a warm body (or in case of Big River, a cold one, as I played a corpse.) I would always agree, and was then locked into several weeks of nightly rehearsals followed by three or four weekends of performance. At the end of each show, tired of having no semblance of a life but the theatre, I would swear off ever performing again. Yet, inevitably, the next show would come and I would get the call, and I would agree to help.
One summer we produced a performance of the Rogers and Hammerstein classic, South Pacific. It was a special show for many reasons, but even more so for landing a scholarship student from Carnegie Melon to create our set designs. And they were incredibly interesting and beautiful designs, but a pain in the butt to build.
One particular Holy Terror of a piece was the show, built specifically for the scene in which Nellie sings the ever popular "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair." Because it was only needed that for one time, it had to be moved on and off stage between scenes. Being a small, community theatre, our stage was not of the best design.
Article comments
1 - Holly Hughes
The first time I ever saw an opera at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, I was getting a drink from a water fountain, and as I raised my head, water still dripping from my mouth, I saw a little bronze plaque: "The Ezio Pinza Drinking Fountain." Having been raised on a steady diet of Rodgers & Hammerstein original cast albums, the minute I saw Ezio Pinza's name, it was all I needed to cue up "Some Enchanted Evening." (Known in our household as "Sam and Janet Evening.") I guess I knew he had been a major opera tenor before being seduced over to Broadway, but that moment, I felt as if I had encountered an old friend in a very unexpected place...