Original Cast, 1976 (Take Home Tunes) (5 / 5) This beautiful cast album continues to mystify listeners as to why The Baker’s Wife was a huge flop. Based on the play and subsequent film La femme du boulanger by Marcel Pagnol and Jean Giono, the musical’s book is by Joseph Stein, with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz. The fable is set in long-ago provincial France, where a middle-aged baker’s young wife leaves him for a torrid affair with a handsome young villager. The show closed on the road to Broadway; most of the cast and creative-team members were replaced during its lengthy tryout tour. When it finally shuttered in Washington, the leads were Paul Sorvino, whose semi-operatic voice sounds great in the songs of Aimable, the baker, on this abridged recording score; Patti LuPone as his wife, Genevieve, belting to high heaven when she has to, but wonderfully warm in the more lyrical passages of the score; Kurt Peterson, appropriately sexy as her young lover, Dominique; and Teri Ralston as Denise, a village woman who gets to sing the lilting “Chanson” in her silvery soprano. All ten songs sung by the principals are superb, from character-establishing numbers like “Merci, Madame” to ravishing ballads like “Endless Delights.” Other highlights include “Gifts of Love,” a gorgeous and poignant piece in which Genevieve resigns herself to a marriage that’s based on companionship rather than passion; “Meadowlark,” the magnificent story-song that the baker’s wife belts out when deciding to go off with her young stud; and “Proud Lady,” sung by the strutting peacock Dominique. Schwartz’s score differs impressively from the style of his monster hits Godspell and Pippin, and the recording boasts lovely orchestrations. — Michael Portantiere

Original London Cast, 1990 (JAY, 2CDs) (1 / 5) Even as musical theater completists appreciate the fact that a high-profile London production of The Baker’s Wife yielded this much lengthier recording of the score, it must be said that the results are unpersuasive in terms of both text and performance. Directed by Trevor Nunn, this version has some new Stephen Schwartz songs, along with several that were in the original production but not previously recorded. Still, the two-CD album is disconcerting.  First of all, as presented here, the songs carried over from the earlier recording have many unfamiliar lyrics; Schwartz has a penchant for tinkering with his own work after the fact, but it’s hard to understand the point of such revisions when the new lyrics don’t represent an improvement over the originals. In “Chanson,” for example, we now hear lyrics about gulls crying rather than sheep bleating. Was this change necessary? Severely truncated as the original recording is, it’s sad to report that the new/old songs included on the JAY recording aren’t very interesting. Many of them involve the villagers gossiping about the Aimable-Genevieve-Dominique affair (although, here, the young man’s name is spelled “Dominic”). As for the leading players: Alun Armstrong’s attempt to compensate for his substandard singing voice with fine acting isn’t successful. He also sings the baker’s songs in much lower keys than Paul Sorvino’s, and the results are dispiriting. The plum role of Genevieve is filled by Shar Lee Hill, who is…no Patti LuPone. As Dominic, Drue Williams sings poorly and sounds effeminate, which certainly doesn’t work for this character.  Jill Martin displays the best voice of all the London principals  in Denise’s “Chanson,” but here again, the song is performed in a considerably lower key than on the American cast album, and is therefore far less effective. — M.P.

Original Broadway Cast, 1965 (MGM/Decca) (2 / 5) One of the last in the cycle of My Fair Lady wannabes, Baker Street is complete with handsome Victorian settings, a misogynistic hero (Sherlock Holmes), and a Cockney chorus high-kicking all over London. The problem was that songwriters Marian Grudeff and Raymond Jessel emphatically were not Lerner and Loewe, not even with Bock and Harnick ghostwriting three numbers (”I’m in London Again,” “Cold Clear World,” and “I Shall Miss You”) during the troubled tryout period. The melodic lines are facile, the lyrics occasionally intricate — as in the ironically named “It’s So Simple” — yet it’s all on the surface. As Holmes, Fritz Weaver is fine, but he can’t make anything memorable of the material. His leading lady, Inga Swenson, by all accounts impressive onstage, doesn’t come across on this recording. Even the old-fashioned, three-part, would-be showstopper “Letters” lands with a thud. Martin Gabel as Moriarty, Peter Sallis as Watson, and Teddy Green as a leading Baker Street Irregular round out the cast; they all work hard, but in vain. Although the album is well designed, with color photos and a verbose synopsis, it never convinces you that this was “the hottest musical of 1965.” It’s worth noting that an even shorter-lived show from that year, Drat! The Cat!,  had one throwaway number in it (“Holmes and Watson”) that encapsulated what was special about the duo better than this entire score. — Marc Miller

Original Broadway Cast, 1964 (Columbia/Sony) No stars; not recommended. Some ethnic groups have all the luck — and some don’t. The same year that Fiddler on the Roof so beautifully celebrated the joys and sorrows of Jewish life, Bajour featured Nancy Dussault as an NYU anthropology major who latches onto a tribe of gypsies led by Herschel Bernardi. Top-billed Chita Rivera plays the daughter of a rival tribe, doing her trademark spitfire thing and belting out cheesy numbers like “Mean.” Ernest Kincy’s libretto and Walter Marks’ score (astonishingly, inspired by New Yorker stories by Joseph Mitchell) are a mishmash of gypsy intrigue that’s enough to induce a heart attack in the politically correct. The recording starts off with a dynamic overture orchestrated by Mort Lindsey and Dussault’s amusing “Where Is the Tribe for Me?” But too often, Bajour is merely desperate and loud. The second-act show-stopper, “Honest Man,” with Bernardi and rival gypsy king Herbert Edelman trying to con each other, is pretty embarrassing. Give it one star if you’re a Chita fan. — David Barbour

Original Broadway Cast, 1983 (Polydor/]AY) (5 / 5) The too-busy opening sequence is a bumpy ride, with some smarmy humor about the conception of a child. Then Liz Callaway sings to Todd Graff, “Picture a flailing spermatozoan / Not even knowin’ where he is goin”‘ — and the sun breaks out, never to leave. The David Shire-Richard Maltby, Jr. score is easily one of the best of the decade, thoroughly contemporary yet melodic and as clever and hilarious as it is heartfelt. When Callaway lets loose with the soaring “The Story Goes On” or when Graff offers the beautiful ballad “I Chose Right,” you could weep at the bad career luck of Maltby and Shire. Other highlights: the strong women’s trio”I Want It All,” the joyous “Fatherhood Blues,” James Congdon’s funny-sad “Easier to Love,” and Beth Fowler’s “Patterns.” (The last-named song was cut from the Broadway production but is generously included here.) Martin Vidnovic and Catherine Cox are wonderful as an infertile yuppie couple, and a belting Kim Criswell figures prominently in the chorus (she’s the mom lamenting the pain of childbirth in “The Ladies Singing Their Song”). Jonathan Tunick’s orchestrations make a great score sound even better, as does Peter Howard’s conducting. Although this musical couldn’t find an audience in its Broadway mounting, it has done well in community and regional theaters. Thanks to Polydor for having given the score such a full recording; just zip past the first two minutes or so, and bliss out.  — Marc Miller

Off-Broadway Cast, 2023 (Yellow Sound Label) (2 / 5) For the Out of The Box Theatrics production of Baby, which had pre- and post-pandemic runs with slightly different casts in 2019 and 2021, lyricist Richard Maltby, Jr. collaborated with the Off-Broadway company’s leadership on a major revision of the show, including Sybille Pearson’s book. The biggest change is that the characters Pam and Nick are now Pam (Christina Sajous) and Nicki (Gabrielle McClinton), a lesbian couple struggling with IVF. The gorgeous voices and moving performances of Sajous and McClinton are the main reason to listen to this recording, even if the rewritten lyrics range from very effective (the ironic “Romance” works even better in the context of Pam’s injections) to overly on-the-nose (“Look, a turkey baster’s coming your way,” sings Nicki in the opening number). McClinton’s thoughtful “At Night She Comes Home to Me,” featuring some new verses, is also an improvement over the original. Most of the other discernible alterations are minor, including some sort-of-modernizing lyric swaps — such as, among the notable personages and characters name-checked in “I Want It All,” Althea Gibson replacing Scarlett O’Hara and Margaret Atwood replacing Margaret Thatcher.  (Very different people!) Four 30-second “Transitions” that were not included in the OBC have made their way onto this recording; they help tie the score together, especially the choral “Transition #3—Commencement.” Johnny Link’s “I Chose Right” is sweetly affecting, and Julia Murney brings appropriate pathos to “Patterns,” but the majority of this album pales significantly in comparison to the superbly produced original recording. It’s hard not to miss Jonathan Tunick’s full orchestrations, which so superbly conveyed the inexpressible immensity of the pregnancy and birth experience. (This new album has some mixing issues, too, with the band often drowning out singers in ensemble moments.) The absence of expansiveness feels especially disappointing in the performance of the score’s greatest asset: the eruptive “The Story Goes On,” here rendered unconvincingly by Out of the Box’s founder Liz Flemming with frequent semi-spoken lines and abrupt shifts in vocal register that work against the song’s epic build. Credit Flemming, though, with giving Baby new life and giving us a ripe reminder of the score’s joys, even if they’re captured more potently on the 1983 cast album. — Dan Rubins

Studio Cast, 1951 (Columbia/Sony) (2 / 5) Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart’s 1937 classic, the father of all those hey-kids-let’s-put-on-a-show movies with Mickey and Judy, has an expendable book and a gold-plated score: The first song on this recording is “Where or When,” and only a few tracks away are “I Wish I Were in Love Again,” “My Funny Valentine,” and “The Lady Is a Tramp.” While Babes in Arms was a good show to inaugurate Lehman Engel’s studio cast series, this 36-minute sampler LP plays more like “Mary Martin and Friends Sing Songs from Babes in Arms.” Miss M. commandeers most of the hit songs and overworks her adorableness, yet she delivers a spectacular “The Lady Is a Tramp.” Engel’s orchestrations reflect the originals, but they’re heavy on strings and include some obvious effects — whistles in “Johnny One Note,” clip-clops in “Way Out West.” Jack Cassidy leads a stirring performance of the title song, with chorus; he also brings intensity to “You Are So Fair,” but he doesn’t get to do the whole number. And Mardi Bayne, rather than singing both great verses of “Way Out West,” does the first one twice! How nuts is that? — Marc Miller

Studio Cast, 1989 (New World) (4 / 5) Now, this is more like it: a nearly complete recording with restored Hans Spialek orchestrations, all the ballet music (Babes in Arms was a George Balanchine show), and Evans Haile energetically conducting the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. All that’s missing is the now-unacceptable “All Dark People,” written by R&H as a specialty for the Nicholas Brothers. Although the ballet music isn’t all that interesting, the orchestrations are terrific, from the pearly celesta in “My Funny Valentine” to the twangs and woodwinds in “Way Out West.” There’s also some spiffy close-harmony work from the guy group JQ and the Bandits. While the casting is vocally deluxe, Judy Blazer, Gregg Edelman, Judy Kaye, and Jason Graae aren’t convincing age-wise as the needy teen offspring of down-on-their-luck vaudevillians. But it would be hard to top Blazer’s reading of “My Funny Valentine,” Kaye’s sarcasm in “Imagine,” or the sheer joy of the title song. It makes you want to go paint a barn, wheel the piano in, and start the auditions! — M.M.

Encores! Concert Cast, 1999 (DRG) (4 / 5) This is a welcome addition to the musicals-in-concert canon. Surprisingly, it doesn’t surpass the 1989 studio version in terms of theatricality; the lead-in dialogue to the songs merely betrays what a wispy book Babes in Arms has. Rob Fisher’s conducting isn’t as vibrant as that of Evans Haile, but the orchestrations come through with more clarity here. Melissa Rain Anderson is no vocal match for Judy Kaye, nor can Erin Dilly wring nuances from a ballad as Judy Blazer can. But David Campbell is more ingratiating than Gregg Edelman and, in general, this cast is more age-appropriate than the other. The New World album has more ballet music, but this one has “All Dark People” — although it’s listed as “Light on Their Feet,” and only the verse lyrics are included. Which of the two most recent recordings to buy? The New World, 10 minutes longer, is for the archivists; the DRG has a less expert but more persuasively up-and-coming cast. As listening experiences, both are just dandy. — M.M.