1958 - Music

Music

Hollywood musical: Vincente Minnelli's Gigi with Leslie Caron, Maurice Chevalier, Louis Jourdan, music by Frederick Loewe, lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner, songs that include "Thank Heaven for Little Girls," "The Night They Invented Champagne," and the title song.

Stage musicals: Say, Darling 4/3 at New York's ANTA Theater, with David Wayne, Vivian Blaine, Johnny Desmond, Robert Morse, Jerome Cowan, Virginia Martin, music and lyrics by Betty Comden, Adolph Green, and Jule Styne, book by Richard Bissell, his wife, Marian, and Abe Burrows in an adaptation of Bissell's 1957 novel (to the Martin Beck Theater 12/8, 332 perfs.); Expresso Bongo 4/23 at London's Saville Theatre, with Paul Scofield, Millicent Martin, Hy Hazell, Elizabeth Ashley, music by London-born composer Monty Norman, 30, and David Heneker, book by Wolf Mankowitz and Julian More, lyrics by Norman and More, songs that include, "Spoil the Child" and "There's Nothing Wrong with British Youth Today"; Irma la Douce 7/17 at London's Lyric Theatre, with Elizabeth Seal, Keith Mitchell, Clive Revill, music by French composer Marguerite Monmot, book and lyrics by Alexandre Breffet, Julian More, Monty Norman, David Heath, 1,512 perfs.; Flower Drum Song 12/1 at New York's St. James Theater, with Pat Suzuki, Juanita Hall, Myoshi Umeki (as the mail-order bride, Mei Lei), Larry Blyden, music and lyrics by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, 601 perfs.

Broadway producer Mike Todd is killed in the crash of his private plane near Grants, N.M., March 22 at age 48 while en route to New York for a banquet to be given in his honor at the Waldorf-Astoria (film star Elizabeth Taylor married him a year ago but has stayed home because of a cold); Broadway musical librettist Herbert Fields dies of a heart attack at New York March 24 at age 60, survived by his sister Dorothy; onetime musical star José Collins dies at her native London December 6 at age 71.

Opera: Vanessa 1/15 at New York's Metropolitan Opera with Eleanor Steber in the title role, music by Samuel Barber, libretto by Gian-Carlo Menotti; Noye's Fludde (Noah's Flood) 6/18 at Orford Church, Suffolk, with music by Benjamin Britten, libretto from the 14th century Chester Miracle Play; Spanish mezzo-soprano Teresa Berganza, 23, makes her first British appearance at Glyndebourne as Cherubino in the 1786 Mozart opera Le Nozze di Figaro and sings at Dallas as Isabella in the 1813 Rossini opera L'Italiana in Algeri.

The Santa Fe Opera opens outside the New Mexico town July 3 with a performance of the 1904 Puccini opera Madame Butterfly. His father has given New York-born impresario John (O'Hea) Crosby, 30, $200,000 to acquire a ranch in the Sangre de Cristo mountains seven miles north of town, he has built an open theater with 480 seats and hired a company of 67, he gains attention by inviting Igor Stravinsky to oversee a production of The Rake's Progress, his total budget for the first season comes to $110,000 (about half of it raised through donations), he will give works by new composers their first performances, a new 2,128-seat theater will open in 1998, and by the time Crosby retires as general director in 2000 his company will have a payroll of 550 and an annual budget of $11 million.

First performances: Concerto No. 2 for Piano and Orchestra by Dmitri Shostakovich 5/10 at Moscow; Nocturne song cycle for tenor and small orchestra by Benjamin Britten 10/16 at Leeds.

Composer Ralph Vaughn Williams dies at London August 26 at age 80; dancer-choreographer Doris Humphrey at New York December 29 at age 63.

Popular songs: "Diana" by Canadian rock singer-composer Paul Anka, 15, who begins a meteoric rise to stardom (he will have made his first $1 million by age 17); "Come On, Let's Go," "Donna," and "La Bamba" by California-born singer-songwriter Richie Valens (Richard Stephen Valenzuela); "Satin Doll" by Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, and Johnny Mercer; "Volare" ("Nel Blue, Disinto di Blu") by Italian composer Dominico Modugno, English lyrics by Mitchell Parish; "Splish Splash" by Bobby Darin and Jean Murray; "Everybody Loves a Lover" by U.S. composer Robert Allen, lyrics by Richard Adler; "The Ballad of Johnny B. Goode," "Sweet Little Sixteen," and "Reelin' and Rockin'" by Chuck Berry; "Sugartime" by Charlie Phillips and Odis Echols; the Kingston Trio records "Tom Dooley" and scores a smashing success; "Twilight Time" by Morty Lewis, lyrics by Buck Ram; "Catch a Falling Star" by Paul Vance and Lee Pockriss; "The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late)" by Ross Bagdasarian; "Jingle Bell Rock" by U.S. songwriters Joe Beal and Jim Boothe.

Blues composer W. C. Handy dies at New York March 28 at age 84. He has been blind and in poor health for some years.

The first Grammy Award given by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences goes to the Italian song "Volare," but the Burbank, Calif., organization comes under fire from much of the recording industry for favoring older, more conservative, white, middle-of-the-road artists over youth-oriented performers.

Irish tenor Josef Locke bids his audiences goodbye, quits show business, and flees to southern Ireland to avoid arrest by British authorities for non-payment of £10,500 in back taxes (see 1947). Now 41, the burly six-foot-three-inch Locke has been earning up to £2,000 per week (20 times more than other entertainers); he buys a racehorse, calls him The Taxman, acquires a Kerry pub called The White Horse Tavern, and will try to keep his various divorces and a paternity suit out of the papers.

The first Monterey Jazz Festival opens in September at Monterey, Calif., where 67 local businessmen have contributed $100 each to back founder Jimmy Lyons in his dream of "having a whole weekend of jazz" in a "sylvan setting with the best jazz people in the whole world playing on the same stage." Participants include Louis Armstrong, Art Farmer, Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday, Harry James, John Lewis, Gerry Mulligan, and Max Roach. Lyons has founded the festival as a non-profit educational corporation, with all proceeds going to support musical education.