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[0:00] Paul Lazarus: Hi, this is Paul Lazarus. In the 1980s, I produced and hosted a radio series called Anything Goes, a celebration of the American musical theater. Now, the Broadway Podcast Network is bringing back these shows. This is the conclusion of a three-part series examining the extraordinary work of composer Stanley Silverman. This program originally aired in 1980 and featured songs from notable Silverman shows like Elephant Steps, Dr. Salovey's Magic Theater, and Hotel for Criminals. You're listening to Anything Goes, and now back to a pre-recorded interview with guest composer Stanley Silverman.

[0:41] Stanley Silverman: This piece, although it really became a song cycle in some ways, because it had no dialogue per se, and the whole structure of it developed from the score, from the songs. At the time you were doing that, did you think that that was experimental? Were you thinking along those lines?

[1:02] Oh, no. You have to understand, Richard and I, we are always amazed that all either interviews with us jointly or things written about us will dwell on certain aspects that they can't seem to get beyond either the newness or the oldness of it. But we always thought that we were part of a tradition in musical theater. In this case, The Review, which had a narrative that linked it together, and it was probably one of the few, if not only, musical that had a painting, a Duchamp painting as the book. It was the sense that you can actually build out of numbers. It really had a lot to do with our feeling for The Review form and imagining what the old Garrick gaieties and the George White scandals.

Indeed, one of the principal backers of this was a wonderful man named Sam Schwartz, who has since died, who ran a group of theaters, including the St. James, who wanted to bring it uptown and asked us to add a half an hour. We didn't, but he still put about, I don't know, lots of thousands of dollars in sale of it. He kept saying that we were like, this piece was like the early Noel Coward reviews, where he would work in the blue period of Picasso. That was like a sketch. He would do a Gertrude Stein-like sketch, and he would just be using elements of the current new arts then.

[2:33] You gave me a tape with three of the songs that didn't end up on the album, and I listened to it. Who was actually singing, Doesn't It Bug You?

[2:43] Well, actually all the women, the four women. It starts with the two ex-wives, Amy and Mary.

[2:54] Amy Taubman and Mary Delson.

[2:55] Mary Delson-Silverman. They're singing, holding two posts, I remember it. They're just singing this kind of Indian-like raga, an introduction to the raga. I think it's an alap. Then the actual raga itself would be the two, Jessica Harper and Denise Della Pena. Denise does most of the high scat singing. Denise sings all the high stuff in the jazz section, and Jessica the lower.

[3:29] Was there any particular reason why these didn't end up on the record, or just there wasn't enough room?

[3:34] There wasn't enough room, and the producer of the record, Herb Gart, who was very experienced in rock, I guess probably felt that what he wanted to present in terms of uniqueness of the album would probably be to minimize the rock.

[4:04] ♪ Musical number: "Doesn't It Bug You?" — performed by the cast of Hotel for Criminals ♪

[8:57] Let's move on to Hotel for Criminals. In your discussion of Hotel for Criminals, you've talked about the fact that it was based on the French silent movie serials by Louis Friard that were called Les Vampires, and which themselves had a profound influence on the French surrealists. I know that your show is a complete reworking and not in any way borrowing it, except for the characters, really, Friard's characters like Fantomas and Hermavet. Why that choice, for instance? What appealed to you in the Friard works that applied to what you wanted to do?

[9:48] Well, in the famous rocky history of the New York City Opera, and Richard Forman and Stanley Silverman, we were commissioned, given commission number one by the newly formed National Opera Institute a couple of years ago. And Julius Rudel called us in and said, would you like to do an opera for the big house here? And so Richard and I sat down and decided what we would want to work on. And I remember seeing the serials.

[10:17] Stanley Silverman: At the Museum of Modern Art where they were shown, and Richard had always loved them. I thought that maybe it would be a good idea to remind Richard of something that he liked very much and was very close to, because it would give him a sense of an already existing work that he could riff on and would take a little bit of the pressure off being totally original and possibly some of the obscurity off the subject. The idea being that he could do what he wants to do anyhow, but there would be a story that he could sort of do it to as a librettist. Of course, he loved that material. He first sat down and wrote another work, Anyhow, which had things like walking tables and an aria by a duck, which again was wonderful.

I could see it would be not produced. So I said, no, let's do The Criminals. We made it like a kind of, oh, I would say seething operetta of the period, using popular song forms of the early 20th century, including that, for me, a subplot of that influence of all those Russians that were there. The Diaghilev sound, some of that Mussorgsky and Stravinsky as well as, although it wasn't Russian, that recent Schoenberg kind of music and that French musical, and that's how it came about. Now we brought it to Rudel, not totally finished, because Lynn Austin was eager to have us follow up C'est La Vie. She wanted another show that she could start and bring to New York, because C'est La Vie had been a hit for her.

So we were pressing Rudel to make the decision to produce it in the big house before I started orchestrating. He finally, he wanted to wait until it was all done. Now that's a few listeners out there. One of the big differences between opera and musical theater is that in opera, they like to see that finished score before they'll tell you they want to do it, and that means all orchestrated, whereas in musicals, you can write about three, four songs, and the guys sit there with the cigars and say, that sounds good, kid, go home, give me another six, and here's $500. In any event, it was in a not complete form, not totally orchestrated, and Rudel decided to pass on it. So we had to reconceive the entire work, orchestrate it down to nine musicians, not use a giant chorus, and bring it down to about nine singers with a couple of auxiliaries, and we did follow that route.

Now because it was a bit of an opera originally, it was larger than C'est La Vie, and I think a little more difficult to maintain in a run economically. It was subsequent to its premiere at Lenox Arts Center, it did come to New York. It's my understanding that it was not a great success when it came to New York, is that true? Well what happened when it came to New York, unlike C'est La Vie, which was unqualified, mainstream hit, its first night of reviews were weak, and what I was saying before is true, is that where you have a situation where there's a piece that has that many musicians and that many singers and you're running off Broadway, you can't wait to see. So the decision to close it was made, and it closed in about two or three weeks, then started the press, including the New York Times, because the Sunday pieces and the music critics and all that came.

That was done at Westbeth, right? Yeah. I think you probably even saw yourself recently, that it's still being written about. It was being written about during Madame Adair. It's just one of those things that got written about after it closed, and also had a more intense fan club, and that's really where I met a lot of the people that I'm active with in film now, because people like Marshall Brickman, Cavett, I believe Woody Allen, they all came to see it and liked it.

[14:48] ♪ Musical number: "Come and Play" — performed by Stanley Silverman ♪

[17:44] Stanley Silverman: You are listening to Anything Goes featuring composer Stanley Silverman. Don't go near my daughter or I'll hit you with my car. It's a silver-plated weapon that I drive beneath the stars. When the moon is over Paris with my daughter by my side, I go dreaming through the city and pretend that she's my bride. Though she's promised to another, he is innocent and weak. In the face of my adventures, he's amazed and cannot speak. For my daughter claims to love him, she is innocent and pure. And I do not mean to shock her, so in silence I endure. And I do not speak my feelings, but I promise her instead to the comfort and the passion of another person's bed. And I float across the city like a shadow bringing fear. And the beauty I've imagined leaves a pain that brings a tear.

[20:34] ♪ Musical number: "Oh Irma" — performed by Lynn Gerb, Lisa Kirschner, and the ensemble ♪

[24:53] Paul Lazarus: Several songs from the Richard Foreman-Stanley Silverman collaboration, Hotel for Criminals. You heard Lynn Gerb, Lisa Kirschner, and the ensemble performing "Come and Play." Paul Yukina sang "Don't Go Near My Daughter." And finally, Ray Marcel, Lynn Gerb, and Lisa Kirschner performed "Oh, Irma."

[25:12] Paul Lazarus: Here's a new composition by Stanley Silverman. This is Silverman's setting of Shakespeare's "Fear No More," featuring the noted singer Sting. This recording is available on a new album entitled In Celebration, The Piano Trios of Stanley Silverman.

[27:55] ♪ Musical number: "Fear No More" — performed by Sting ♪

[29:07] ♪ Musical number: "Swinging at the Stock Exchange" — performed by Unknown performer ♪