A LATE BRAVO TO GIOVANNI By Peter Filichia
That December 18th is the anniversary of Ossie Davis’ birth made me think of the 1962 musical BRAVO GIOVANNI.
No, although Davis interacted with three musicals in his career, BRAVO GIOVANNI wasn’t one of them. I’ll explain the connection, as Henrik says in A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC, “later.”
In 1957, Davis would only participate in two duets in JAMAICA, but both were terrific songs: “Little Biscuit,” a delightful Act One declaration of love, and “What Good Does It Do?” an Act Two realization that love didn’t turn out to be lovely. Those were enough for Davis to receive a Tony nomination as Best Featured Actor in a Musical.
And yet, Davis didn’t do another Broadway musical until THE ZULU AND THE ZAYDA, which had planned to open on November 9, 1965, at 7:15 p.m.
Alas, fewer than two hours before showtime, New York (and much of the East Coast) experienced a blackout.
So, not until the next night did the critics hear Davis sing four of Harold Rome’s songs. Although he wasn’t The Zayda (that’s Yiddish for grandfather) and was a Zulu, he wasn’t the Zulu of the title; that was up-and-comer Louis Gossett.
And yet, Rome gave Davis more songs than Gossett and just as many as Menasha Skulnik had as The Zayda. They’re very good songs, too.
Five years later, Davis co-wrote the libretto for PURLIE, the musical version of his own 1961 play PURLIE VICTORIOUS. The stirring Geld and Udell score greatly helped the on-the-rise careers of Cleavon Little and Melba Moore, both of whom won Tonys.
So, where does BRAVO GIOVANNI fit into all this? Producer Philip Rose told me in 2000 that if all had gone as he’d originally anticipated, BRAVO GIOVANNI would have opened on December 18, 1961.
Here’s how he remembered that: some months before that date, he was dining with Davis, whom he’d previously hired to replace Sidney Poitier in A RAISIN IN THE SUN and whose PURLIE VICTORIOUS he was in the process of producing. When Rose mentioned the December 18th date, Davis brightened and said, “That’s my birthday!”
But BRAVO didn’t open until May 19, 1962. Cesare Siepi, its star, was only too happy to explain the delay in his Playbill bio. It ate up two columns that filled an entire page and needed another page for 27 more words.
The uber-egocentric bio began, “The debut in a musical comedy of a singer of the caliber of internationally acclaimed opera and concert star Cesare Siepi is truly an event of this or any other theatrical season.”
Siepi then told of his 11-year “reign at the Metropolitan Opera” where he called himself “the king of bassos” as well as “the tall, powerfully built, handsome Italian,” “a fascinating and disarming gentleman” who was “multi-lingual, a vivid conversationalist and to boot one of the world’s most sought-after bachelors.”
And the delay?
“When it became known that he was interested in doing a musical comedy, the actor-singer was showered with offers to appear on Broadway. BRAVO GIOVANNI seemed to him the first to fit his background, personality and musical gifts, and he signed with producer Philip Rose. There was one stumbling block, however: a contract he could not cancel to sing Don Giovanni at London’s Covent Garden. To indicate he knew the value of the prize he had won, Rose grandly postponed his entire production for a full year.”
Not a full year but five months, as Rose told. Siepi did Mozart’s Giovanni in February of 1962, just before rehearsing Rose’s Giovanni.
Rose fully admitted that two others were partly to blame for the postponement: lyricist Ronny Graham and himself.
After all, Rose found Howard Shaw’s novel THE CRIME OF GIOVANNI VENTURI. It told of an owner of a new Italian restaurant that opened near a successful Italian restaurant. So, the new restaurateur had a tunnel burrowed to the other establishment so it could steal its meals and serve them to its own customers.
Hmmm. But an Internet search will show you that the novel has many fans.
Stanley Prager liked the novel, too. And given that his first attempt at directing had been the recent Neil Simon hit COME BLOW YOUR HORN, Rose decided that he might be good at staging BRAVO’s freewheeling farce.
Besides, Prager made a strong case for himself by saying how much he’d learned from legendary director George Abbott, when directed by him in THE PAJAMA GAME.
(Prager played Prez, the union leader who sang the ungrammatical “Her Is.” Don’t depend on the soundtrack to hear it; the film dropped it. But the song still lives on the cast album.)
Because BRAVO would be Rose’s first musical – PURLIE and SHENANDOAH were years away – he trusted Prager. He believed the director’s claim that he knew top-notch TV comedy writers and would get one for BRAVO’s book.
Alas, many turned Prager down, but finally one accepted: A.J. Russell, who had written eight of the 144 episodes of the ’50s sitcom YOU’LL NEVER GET RICH.
(That could be said of everyone involved with BRAVO GIOVANNI.)
Prager also recommended Graham, who had rocketed to success in NEW FACES OF 1952 for which he also had provided many lyrics. Graham, in turn, recommended his composer friend Milton Schaefer. BRAVO now had its team.
And its problems. Rose recalled that Graham would often arrive late at backers’ auditions, where he was to perform the show. Moneymen who’d been sitting and waiting weren’t amused. It was another reason why the production was stalled.
As you’d assume, BRAVO also had a love story. Giovanni, pushing 40 (as was Siepi), had to wonder if Miranda, played by 19-year-old Michele Lee, could possibly be as smitten with him as he was with her.
When the show was auditioning potential Mirandas, Rose was much taken with another 19-year-old: Barbra Streisand. He was fascinated by her personality and assertiveness, while Prager was put off by her appearance.
(Back then, Streisand’s atypical looks flummoxed many. As Pete Hamill said in his July 27, 1963, Saturday Evening Post feature on her, “What there is would not launch a thousand ships.”)
So, Streisand instead went into I CAN GET IT FOR YOU WHOLESALE, which opened eight weeks before BRAVO did. Ho-ho-ho, who had the last laugh (and Tony nomination) then?
Opening night of BRAVO, Rose remembered reading reviews in his non-airconditioned apartment on a day when the temperature had reached 99 degrees – a May 19th record that has held to this day.
Unfortunately, the reviews weren’t so hot. And now that we’ve read Siepi’s bio, we’re not surprised that Rose said all that the star cared about was whether the critics had lavishly praised his singing.
To be fair, the cast album does reveal that Siepi sounds wonderful in this Tony-nominated score.
Devoted musical theater have been waiting for this fact to be entered into evidence. Yes, the 76-performance BRAVO got a Best Score nod while a musical that ran nearly 13 times longer – and even won Best Musical – did not: Stephen Sondheim’s A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM.
For BRAVO to get “Bravos!” from at least a majority of Tony nominators, it must have something. The cast album is awaiting your opinion…Peter Filichia can be heard most weeks of the year on www.broadwayradio.com. His new day-by-day wall calendar – A SHOW TUNE FOR TODAY – 366 Songs to Brighten Your Year – is now available on Amazon
