Original Off-Broadway Cast, 1975 (Vanguard/no CD) No stars; not recommended. The dated humor of this revue makes the cast album more of a time capsule than a listening pleasure. Written as a love letter to New York, the score, by composer Hank Beebe and lyricist Bill Heyer, takes lightly satirical swipes at Big Apple attitude (“Everything You Hate Is Right Here,” sung by “Sodom and the Gomorrahs”), nudity in the theater (“Things Were Out”), sex (“Fugue for a Ménage aTrois”), and the dating scene (“Singles Bar”). The archeologically minded will appreciate the two sketches included on the recording, especially the dialogue between a cab driver and an out-of-towner who complains about Broadway theater tickets costing 17 dollars. It’s all very lacking in distinction, although the title tune is rather stirring. Of the three-person cast, only Patti Perkins stands out with her childlike belt. Seventies nostalgists may change the rating above to one star. — David Barbour

Original Broadway Cast, 1997 (JAY) (3 / 5) Pierre Marivaux’s 1722 farce La surprise de l’amour gets a musical workout and an English title, Triumph of Love, thanks to librettist James Magruder, composer Jeffrey Stock, and lyricist Susan Birkenhead. Christopher Sieber is Agis, a young Prince of Sparta, raised by his rationalist Aunt Hesione (Betty Buckley) and Uncle Hermocrates (F. Murray Abraham) to disdain emotional expression and the usurping Princess Leonide (Susan Egan). Naturally, the latter shows up, love blossoms, and complications multiply like rabbits. (This show sets a world’s record for mistaken-identity plot twists.) The narrative is wearying at times — even reading the synopsis in the CD booklet can lead to fatigue — but the songs are accomplished and often enjoyable. Stock has a definite gift for soaring, exciting melodies, orchestrated here by Bruce Coughlin, and Birkenhead’s lyrics are very witty. The best songs are the opener, “This Day of Days,” “Serenity,” and “Issue in Question,” in which Hesione and Agis struggle with feelings of love. “Teach Me Not to Love You” is a notably pretty quartet. The score is less successful when trolling for Broadway laughs via the clown characters played by Nancy Opel, Roger Bart, and Kevin Chamberlin, whose songs include “Mr. Right” and “Henchmen Are Forgotten.” The cast, however, is exemplary. Buckley’s singing is nothing short of heroic, especially in “Serenity” and “If I Cannot Love,” which was cut during previews but is offered here as a bonus track. Sieber and Egan provide sterling vocals, and Abraham is surprisingly effective in “Emotions.” (Note that the melody of “Mr. Right” is by Van Dyke Parks, and that of “Have a Little Faith” is by Michael Kosarin.) — David Barbour

Original Broadway Cast, 1951 (Columbia/Sony) (4 / 5) With its high nostalgia quotient and dream ballet, this adaptation of Betty Smith’s beloved novel — scripted by Smith herself, with George Abbott’s help — may seem more like the work of Rodgers and Hammerstein than that of Arthur Schwartz and Dorothy Fields. Although A Tree Grows in Brooklyn didn’t quite recoup its investment during its eight-month run, the show felt like a hit at the time. And the cast album, produced by Goddard Lieberson with his usual finesse, captures the excitement of recording the score just after the rave reviews came in. Schwartz’s music shows his fine gift for evoking time, place, and mood in his songs, and Fields superbly captures the rough-and-tumble atmosphere of early-20th-century Brooklyn in her lyrics, which are poignant, salty, or hilarious by turns. As the tragic young Nolans, Johnny Johnston and Marcia Van Dyke are a bit on the dull side but are blessed with magnificent material, from his cocky “Mine ‘Til Monday” and “I’m Like a New Broom” to her pensive “Make the Man Love Me” and joyous “Look Who’s Dancing.” As sassy Aunt Cissy, Shirley Booth is occasionally off pitch but otherwise dead on, wringing every drop of bawdiness and poignancy from “He Had Refinement” and “Is That My Prince?” Some abrupt tonal shifts between comedy and tragedy betray the dramaturgical problems that may have contributed to the show not having a longer run, and a hokey hit-song finale fashioned especially for the recording was a mistake. Still, this is an overall excellent preservation of an undersung, affecting score. — Marc Miller

Original Broadway Cast, 1963 (Capitol/Angel) (3 / 5) In its CD and MP3 formats, this cast album is very different from the original LP edition in that, aside from the overture, no song is in the same position as it was on the original. Still, in any medium, Tovarich is a pleasant listen, with a score by composer Lee Pockriss and lyricist Anne Croswell. Film stars Vivien Leigh and Jean Pierre Aumont play the leads, Tatiana and Mikail, two Russian royals who flee to Paris after the revolution and hire themselves out as a butler and a maid. Most of the songs aren’t terribly dramatic, as their titles indicate: “You Love Me,” “The Only One,” “I Know the Feeling,” and “All for You.” But they’re all lovely, and they do have the right feel. Margery Gray and Byron Mitchell as the young adults in the household, who fall in puppy love with their new servants, have two undistinguished but fun songs together. And Mitchell gets to do a Charleston with Leigh in the tuneful paean to “Wilkes-Barre, PA.” — Peter Filichia

Original Cast, 1970 (Ampex/no CD) No stars; not recommended. For years, this seemed the most ubiquitous of all show recordings. It turned up everywhere: at garage sales, school sales, library sales. If you moved into a new apartment, you’d find a copy of Touch in the closet. One has to wonder who on earth bought the thing, but lots of people had to if it ended up in all those places. For the record, this is a sweet-tempered, soft-rock musical, with a score by Jim Crozier and Kenn Long, that got decent notices and had a modest run Off-Broadway. With its environmental and social concerns, the show was certainly well meaning, but its dramaturgy is primitive and its songs are flavorless. There’s very little here to interest musical theater aficionados. — David Wolf

Original Broadway Cast, 1951 (Capitol/DRG) (3 / 5) Some types of comedy date very quickly, and this zany musical expedition into the world of vaudeville comics is an example of that. Still, it’s a wonderful time capsule from the early 1950s, performed by many of the leading comedians of the day. Phil Silvers, Jack Albertson, and Rose Marie joined forces to make Top Banana a solid hit in 1951, and Silvers’ performance won him the 1952 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical. While this star vehicle has faded into obscurity, the cast album is a spirited, buoyant tribute to showbiz of another era. The clever songs of the great Johnny Mercer are outstanding; yes, the legendary lyricist also composed the music for this show. The recording is full of gems such as  “I Fought Every Step of the Way,” “A Word a Day,” and others that can still elicit guffaws. — Gerard Alessandrini

Studio Cast, 1977 (Painted Smiles) (2 / 5) The world’s oldest collection of co-eds bops to a lower-drawer score by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart in this Ben Bagley recording of a 1939 hit that hasn’t worn well. Although there are attractive songs sung on the campus of Pottawatomie College, including “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was” and “You’re Nearer” (the latter written for the 1940 film version), they’re undermined by Dennis Deal’s blaring arrangements and one of Bagley’s most indulgent exercises in camp interpretation. The vocal arrangements are subpar, too. As for the singers, undergrad Estelle Parsons croaks “My Prince”; Nancy Andrews injects some pizzazz into the glaringly non-P.C “Spic and Spanish”; Johnny Desmond and Arthur Siegel sing well enough without ever coming anywhere near a character. And Tony Perkins, whose ringing baritenor had surprised everyone in Greenwillow, pretty much whispers his vocals here — not ineptly, but without any special insight. Some of the songs do have the old Rodgers and Hart spirit. One example is the opening number, “Heroes in the Fall,” with lyrics ghost-written by Rodgers for the off-on-a-binge Hart. But many of the others (“She Could Shake the Maracas,” “Cause We Got Cake,” and “Sweethearts of the Team” in an excruciating rendition) sound like pale imitations of the team’s better work. — Marc Miller

Studio Recording, 1969 (MCA) (5 / 5) Originally conceived for presentation on record, this seminal “rock opera” is thrillingly melodic and dramatic. Small wonder that it was subsequently adapted as a film and, later, a Broadway musical. Tommy was mostly composed for The Who by guitarist Pete Townshend, but there is additional material by two other members of that legendary rock band, John Entwistle and Keith Moon. Oddly, the score also includes “Eyesight to the Blind,” a pre-existing song by Sonny Boy Williamson; Townshend presumably added the number because it fits well into this story of a deaf, dumb, and blind boy who becomes world famous as a “Pinball Wizard.” Most of the character Tommy’s songs are performed by Roger Daltrey, who sings beautifully and persuasively. Among the recording’s many highlights are “Amazing Journey,” “Go to the Mirror, Boy,” “I’m Free,” and “Sensation.” — Michael Portantiere

Studio Cast with Symphony Orchestra, 1972 (Ode) (3 / 5) Realizing that Tommy is filled with wonderful melodies that could benefit from symphonic treatment, Lou Reizner produced a complete recording of the score featuring the London Symphony Orchestra and Chambre Choir with soloists Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey, and John Entwistle of The Who, plus Maggie Bell as the Mother, Steve Winwood as the Father, Ringo Starr as Uncle Ernie, Rod Stewart rasping out “Pinball Wizard,” and Richie Havens singing “Eyesight to the Blind.” Unfortunately, arrangers Wil Malone and James Sullivan threw out the baby with the bathwater, largely obliterating the rock-band sound of the piece with symphonic orchestrations. On top of that, the veddy proper-sounding choir creates an odd impression in numbers like “Pinball Wizard” and “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” as if they were recording Handel’s Messiah rather than a seminal rock opera. Among the most successful cuts on the album are “It’s a Boy” and “Amazing Journey,” if only because they retain something of an authentic rock sound. — M.P.

Film Soundtrack, 1975 (Polydor, 2CDs) (2 / 5) This recording has several things to recommend it: Roger Daltrey, at the peak of his vocal powers, is back again in the title role; The Who’s drummer, Keith Moon, does a fine job in the role of Uncle Ernie; and the rest of the band members make cameo appearances in the “Pinball Wizard” sequence and elsewhere. Ann-Margret sings well as Tommy’s mother (here called Nora), even if she sometimes over-emotes. The starry supporting cast includes Elton John (“Pinball Wizard”) and Eric Clapton (“Eyesight to the Blind”). On top of all this, the one-and-only Tina Turner is the definitive Acid Queen. But the album has two big strikes against it: The unrelenting deployment of synthesizers in the arrangements actually makes the score sound more dated than it does on The Who’s original recording, and Oliver Reed sings very poorly in the major role of Tommy’s mother’s lover. Legend has it that Jack Nicholson, having been cast in the film in the small role of the Doctor, was nervous about his singing ability, but when he heard Reed’s pre-recordings, he relaxed. It’s easy to understand why. — M.P.

Original Broadway Cast, 1993 (RCA, 2CDs) (3 / 5) It wasn’t until almost a quarter-century after the release of The Who’s original recording of Tommy that the piece was finally adapted as a full-fledged stage musical. The resulting show had a lot going for it, as does the cast album, produced by the legendary George Martin. Michael Cerveris is persuasive in the title role, complete with a convincing if somewhat aggressive British accent. As Tommy’s mother and father, Marcia Mitzman and Jonathan Dokuchitz also sound credibly British. The three leads sing spectacularly well, and sharply etched supporting performances are turned in by Paul Kandel as Uncle Ernie and Anthony Barrile as Cousin Kevin. The musical adaptation pays homage to the original album while adding a theatrical flair; the addition of orchestrations to the basic rock-band sound is more successful here than on the 1972 symphonic recording. (Steve Margoshes is credited with the orchestrations, while Joseph Church is listed as musical supervisor and director.) Director Des McAnuff oversaw a production that was praiseworthy in many respects. In fact, the show’s only major flaw was that Pete Townshend rewrote two key sections of the opera for no good reason. First, while Cheryl Freeman as the Gypsy does a fine job with the “Acid Queen” number, the song is strangely reconceived so that this drug-addicted prostitute sings about what she’s going to do to Tommy but never actually does it. Much worse, Townshend futzed with the ending of the piece in a way that completely contradicts the original point. In all previous versions of Tommy, the title character becomes the leader of a quasi-religious cult, and his followers turn against him when they realize that he’s attempting to control their minds; in this version, Tommy’s acolytes rebel because he tells them they should think for themselves! — M.P.

Original Broadway Cast, 1997 (RCA) (5 / 5) You’ll be hard-pressed to find more beautiful choral singing than that heard on the cast album of Titanic, the musical about the sinking of that famed “ship of dreams.” Composer-lyricist Maury Yeston’s score is grand and sweeping, and more than 40 voices are employed to represent the Irish peasants, middle-class professionals, wealthy society types, et al. aboard the doomed vessel. For this clash of classes, Yeston offers a suitable variety of music, from the stunning, operatic opening sequence to some Celtic-tinged tunes. A rag number and Yeston’s own lovely version of “Autumn” — supposedly one of the last songs played by the musicians on deck as the ship went down — give the score a sense of time and place, while Jonathan Tunick’s lush orchestrations evoke the feelings of adventure, hope, and loss that the disaster still inspires; you can hear the growl of an angry ocean in the overture, and you can see the black night described by a sailor in the haunting “No Moon.” Yeston shows remarkable theatricality and innovation throughout the score, notably in two sequences: “The Blame,” a heated colloquy sung by the ship’s owner, builder, and captain; and “Mr. Andrews’ Vision,” in which the horror-struck ship builder foresees the ship’s chilling final moments. All of the lyrics are strong, and Yeston is fortunate that Michael Cerveris, Brian d’Arcy James, David Garrison, John Cunningham, Victoria Clark, and a superlative cast of actor/singers preserved his words and music for this recording. — Brooke Pierce

New York Concert Cast, 1998 (New World, 2CDs) (4 / 5) Enchanting piffle from 1925, Tip-Toes has a funny Fred Thompson-Guy Bolton book, a dancey Gershwin score, and an insuperable cast in this Carnegie Hall concert performance. The orchestral materials, as Rob Fisher relates in his liner notes, were in good shape except for the Arden and Ohlman dual-piano parts; Joseph Thalken and John Musto recreate these spectacularly. Fisher’s orchestra sounds just a tad underpopulated, and the conductor might have picked up the pace of such songs as “When Do We Dance?” and “Sweet and Low-Down.” The chorus is on the thin side, too, with just eight voices. But what a darling song collection this is — big on George Gershwin syncopation, blue-note harmonies, and lightly satirical Ira Gershwin lyrics. The cast members perform in perfect period style, and with total conviction. Emily Loesser is an ideal Jazz Age heroine, her light soprano caressing “Looking for a Boy” with great affection, and Andy Taylor is a young hero right out of a John Held, Jr. cartoon. Principal comics Lewis J. Stadlen and Lee Wilkof winningly sock across the silly jokes and puns, and enough dialogue is included to give you an idea of the book. This is a lighter, simpler show than other Gershwin gems — so patently innocent that, at one point, the hero and heroine sing to each other, “Goody-goody-goodnight, sleep tight.” But the charm never curdles, it just charms. (Note: Also included on this two-CD set is the score of the Gershwins’ Tell Me More.) — Marc Miller

Original Broadway Cast, 1980 (DRG) (3 / 5) Allegedly, this was the first-ever digitally recorded cast album. A cavalcade of early-20th-century Americana, Tintypes sounds splendid here as its five-member cast and small band run through several dozen period songs — some classic, some virtually forgotten — in witty arrangements by Mel Marvin. Unlike so many other revues, the show has a real arc, and the songs comment wonderfully on themselves; for instance, “Toyland” becomes an anthem about America’s lost innocence, and “I Want What I Want When I Want It” is sung by a bellicose Teddy Roosevelt. Hearing “The Stars and Stripes Forever” or “Meet Me in St. Louis” for the zillionth time isn’t so thrilling, but trivialities like “Electricity” and “Teddy Da Roose” are well worth a listen, especially as rendered by this talented quintet: The fine character actor Trey Wilson and the elegant soprano Carolyn Mignini play the elites; the funny Mary Catherine Wright and the pre-directorial Jerry Zaks embody the downtrodden immigrant masses; and Lynne Thigpen is a marvel in everything she does. As Anna Held’s maid (it’s complicated, but the well-edited album supplies a context), Thigpen slowly builds the old Bert Williams favorite “Nobody” to a shattering finish. Wisely, this was the Act I finale; nobody in his or her right mind would have followed it. — Marc Miller

Original Broadway Cast, 1966 (Warner Bros./no CD) (3 / 5) Based on Richard Llewellyn’s popular book How Green Was My Valley, which inspired the acclaimed 1941 movie of the same title, A Time for Singing deals with the grim lives of Welsh coal miners. The John Morris-Gerald Freedman score surely sings out their tale, right from the a cappella opening to the tragic finale. The choral work is ample and terrific throughout, and leading man Ivor Emmanuel’s Welsh baritone is overpowering. Morris’s harmonies are not standard-issue Broadway; they’re wrapped up in evocative Don Walker orchestrations, and several ballads (“That’s What Young Ladies Do,” “There Is Beautiful You Are,” “Let Me Love You”) deserve rediscovery. What seems to have killed the show more than anything else is the casting. Shani Wallis is a simpering leading lady, while Tessie O’Shea and Laurence Naismith are far too old to be convincing as the parents of eight-year-old Huw (Frank Griso, an irritating child actor). Elizabeth Hubbard and an up-and-coming George Hearn are wasted in supporting roles. Also, the score goes conventional just when it needs to offer something special, as in Wallis’s “When He Looks at Me” or the wimpy title tune. Still, this deeply felt neo-operetta doesn’t deserve the obscurity it has suffered for decades, and its great ensemble work is all over the cast album.  — Marc Miller

Original Off-Broadway Cast, 2001 (RCA) (3 / 5) This minor but appealing Off-Broadway effort was adapted by playwright David Auburn from a semi-autobiographical, one-person show that had been written and performed by songwriter Jonathan Larson. It also incorporates material from an unproduced Larson project titled Superbia. Arguably, the show’s main weakness is that some audiences may find it a little hard to care very deeply about the angst suffered by an unsuccessful musical theater songwriter as he approaches age 30. But there are many mitigating factors, not the least of which is one’s knowledge that Larson would die unexpectedly a few years later. The show and the cast album also provided an early showcase for the brilliant singing actor Raúl Esparza. Equally effective are Amy Spanger as Jon’s increasingly fed-up lover, Susan, and Jerry Dixon as his best friend, Michael, who has given up bohemia for business and who harbors a heartbreaking secret. Then there are the songs, which confirm Larson’s thrilling talent. They include the touching trio “Johnny Can’t Decide”; the witty “Sunday,” a number about working in a diner that’s also a parody of a certain Stephen Sondheim ballad; and the fervent “Come to Your Senses.” The impassioned finale “Louder Than Words,” with its wounded idealism, is excellent. A moving bonus track features Larson himself singing a cut number, “Boho Days.” — David Barbour

Film Soundtrack, 2020 (Masterworks) (5 / 5) Lin-Manuel Miranda’s film version of tick, tick…BOOM! is a triumph. Steven Levenson’s screenplay deftly expands the three-person stage piece into a large-cast feature film while referencing its solo-show origins. Thus, we see Jonathan Larson (Andrew Garfield, in a stunning, out-of-left-field performance) onstage at New York Theatre Workshop, providing running commentary and cueing several numbers, backed up by Joshua Henry and Vanessa Hudgens. From the score’s first jittery piano chords, we are in masterful hands. Garfield, his voice reedy and soulful in quiet moments and gutsy where it counts, delivers full-throttle renditions of the panic-stricken “30/90” the ruminative “Why,” and “Louder Than Words,” arguably Larson’s finest number. As Michael, Robin de Jesús provides fine sardonic contrast, kvelling over his posh new apartment in “No More” and confronting his mortality in “Real Life.” As Susan, Alexandra Shipp shares her character’s big number with Hudgens, their voices coming together gorgeously in “Come to Your Senses.” The luxuriously cast Henry buttresses every number with his lustrous vocals. And even without the listener to this album being able to see the uproarious parade of cameos in the film’s “Sunday” sequence — “There’s Chita! There’s Bernadette! There’s Daphne Rubin-Vega!” — the song is a triumph, a wicked bit of self-mockery folded into a loving parody of a signature Stephen Sondheim anthem. The tune stack varies from the stage version in certain respects, beginning with the song order: “Boho Days,” heard as an extra on the 2001 CD, is now integrated into a party scene, while “Green Green Dress” has been moved to the final credits, and the the tender ballad “See Her Smile” has been cut entirely. Bits of Larson’s Superbia heard in the film are not to be found here, but several numbers cut from early versions of tick, tick…BOOM! have been interpolated, including “Play Game” (a rap commentary on Broadway commercialism, delivered by Tariq Trotter of the hip-hop group The Roots) and “Swimming” (in which Larson hits a pool while fretting about his problems). Among the bonus tracks are a pop cover of “Come to Your Senses” by R&B singer Jazmine Sullivan; the disco-tastic “Out of My Dreams,” by dance-music diva Victoria Jackson; and “Only Takes a Few” by the indie folk group The Mountain Goats. (It would be interesting to know the provenance of these numbers, all credited to Larson.) A heartfelt tribute from one young musical theater master to another, the film and the recording are musts. — D.B.

Studio Cast, 2001 (PS Classics) (2 / 5) Hats off to PS Classics for issuing the premiere recording of this interesting curio, a 1931 Vincent Youmans flop — and hats back on for their having made such a muddle of it. Not that the material, adapted from the old stage weepie Smilin’ Through, isn’t tricky, with its confusing, multi-generational love story and subsidiary comic romance. Youmans seems to have written two scores for the two stories: one long-lined and elegant, the other standard musical comedy, both melodically and harmonically beguiling. But, instead of the original orchestrations, the recording presents a soupy reduction by conductor Aaron Gandy, played by a 12-piece group that sounds like the Mantovani Chamber Ensemble. Leading lady Heidi Grant Murphy, much admired in opera, is flat-out dull here, while leading man Philip Chaffin ably navigates Youmans’ melodic leaps without sounding much engaged. Even the usually impeccable Brent Barrett is droopy, although he does come to life in “How Happy Is the Bride,” a tricky Youmans melody saddled with awkward Edward Heyman lyrics. The best work comes from the real-life couple Hunter Foster and Jennifer Cody, who handle the lighter pieces with a fine understanding of 1930s style. Snatches of dialogue evoke what must have been a long evening of romantic entanglements punctuated by some pretty Youmans melodies. — Marc Miller

Original Cast, 2004 (Original Cast Records) (4 / 5) In musicalizing the true story of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, who murdered a boy in 1924 Chicago, composer-lyricist-librettist Stephen Dolginoff didn’t attempt to replicate the Chicago method of dealing with such difficult and disturbing subject matter. Instead, he eschewed the splashy and comic, and he wrote a taut, chamber-musical character study that became a sold-out hit in the 2003 Midtown International Theatre Festival. The cast recording omits a few songs and lots of dialogue, but it preserves the work’s uncompromising intensity and perfectly integrated score. Christopher Totten handles Leopold’s material very well; he gives the soul-searching “Way Too Far” a beautiful rendition, and his “Thrill Me” is provocative. Matthew S. Morris imbues Loeb with a desperate arrogance and is outstanding in the show’s most memorable song, “Roadster,” in which Loeb lures his victim into his clutches. Dolginoff depicts the murderers as sparring, codependent lovers, and Leopold’s gradual transformation from a passive figure to a power player comes across well on the recording. Accompanied only by Gabriel Kahane on piano, Morris’s and Totten’s voices blend smoothly. Just try listening to the climactic number “Life Plus 99 Years” without getting the chills. — Matthew Murray

Original Broadway Cast, 1952 (Capitol/Angel) (2 / 5) The singing on this recording of a misfire by Abe Burrows and Ralph Blane is so gorgeous that you’ll forgive Blane’s score for being less than riveting. Based on a Charles O’Neal novel, Three Wishes for Jamie is a nouveau operetta about a romantic Irishman who emigrates to Georgia in 1896, marries the girl of his dreams, and adopts a Gaelic-speaking son; those, after all, are his three wishes. Fortunately, the Irishman is John Raitt, and as soon as his voice soars above the staff in “The Girl That I Court in My Mind,” you know that this cast album will be more than listenable. Anne Jeffreys, in splendid voice, has even better chances: a lazy ballad titled “My Home’s a Highway,” and a sad soliloquy with intriguing harmonies, “What Do I Know?” Also on hand are Charlotte Rae as a frump, delicious in a showy piece of special material, and Bert Wheeler, who’s rather tiresome here. Working minus Hugh Martin, Blane produced pedestrian lyrics but often lilting music, especially as orchestrated by Robert Russell Bennett. The Irish blarney gets pretty thick, the story hasn’t much fire, and songs like “It’s a Wishing World” are time-passers. But as long as Raitt and Jeffreys are singing, it all passes pleasantly. — Marc Miller

Original Off-Broadway Cast, 1954 (MGM/Decca) (5 / 5) This is the Carmen Capalbo production that helped put Off-Broadway on the map. One of the most important musical theater works of the 20th century, The Threepenny Opera is Marc Blitzstein’s translation of Die Dreigroschenoper, as it was titled in Germany. (Several recordings of the original German language version are available.) The powerful score is sung here by Jo Sullivan, Scott Merrill, Beatrice Arthur, Charlotte Rae, Martin Wolfson, Paul Dooley, and the one-and-only Lotte Lenya. The story, lifted freely from John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, concerns the ruthless Mack the Knife, his doxies, and the Peachum family, headed by Mr. Peachum, who makes tattered costumes guaranteed to garner beggars a solid income. When Kurt Weill spewed the score, he hadn’t yet begun to smooth the corners of his oom-pah-pah melodies; meanwhile, his collaborator Bertolt Brecht had honed his cynicism so that it cut as cleanly as Mack’s signature weapon. Lenya doesn’t sing much, but what she does utter our of the corner of her mouth includes the vengefully triumphant “Pirate Jenny” and “The Solomon Song.” She may also be heard with Merrill in the “Tango-Ballade” duet, and the Decca CD edition of this recording offers Lenya in a bonus track: her rendition of “Mack the Knife,” with Blitzstein on piano, taken from “an unidentified source.” Is any more reason needed to own this disc? Beatrice Arthur knocks the “Barbara Song” around, Jo Sullivan is perfect as the innocent/tarnished Polly, and Charlotte Rae is terrific as the tough Mrs. Peachum. — David Finkle

Broadway Cast, 1976 (Columbia/Masterworks Broadway) (4 / 5) Not unlike Show Boat and Porgy and Bess, to cite two other famous examples, The Threepenny Opera may have an official version, but does anyone know what it is?  Certainly, people like Richard Foreman, who directed this still-talked-about revival at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theatre, have felt no compunction about taking major liberties with the show; they have freely rearranged the Kurt Weill-Bertolt Brecht song order, and have turned to various translators and adapters to do what they will with Brecht’s libretto. Here, the cast sings words by Ralph Manheim and John Willett. Too much of the time, sorry to say, those words are set more awkwardly on the notes than Brecht might have approved. (Did keeper-of-the-flame Lotte Lenya not speak up?) The cast, attempting to make fluid sense of the lyrics, fares well throughout. Raul Julia may sound less like a typical English criminal than a fellow with a Hispanic background, but he does impress as a bloke whose knife flashes quickly. The supporting cast members include some of the best talent available at the time. Maybe the most surprising is Ellen Greene, heard here before she put herself on the theater map in Little Shop of Horrors; she sings “Pirate Jenny” with glee and vengeance oozing from every note. Other standouts are Caroline Kava as the once-innocent Polly Peachum and Blair Brown as Lucy Brown. Kava sings “Barbara-Song,” bringing out the disillusion that infiltrates the young woman’s optimistic philosophy, and she joins Brown in the ironic catfight “Liebeslied.” Perhaps the most notable feature of this Threepenny Opera is how strikingly it’s conducted by Stanley Silverman, who wields a properly unforgiving baton. — D.F.

London Cast, 1994 (JAY) (3 / 5) No way to know for sure without scoping every Threepenny Opera recording known to humankind, but there are those who say this is the most scatological version ever. Jeremy Sams, who directed the Donmar Warehouse production, is responsible for the lyrics, with the translation/adaptation of the book credited to Robert David MacDonald. What surely can be said of the result as heard on the cast album is that anyone who prizes English propriety is in for audible shock after shock. Of course, John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera (1728) is the Threepenny Opera inspiration, and Gay was writing at a time when Newgate Prison banter had a big influence on English vocabulary and expression. That sort of thing is abundantly present here in a liberal employment of various words that family newspapers don’t consider printable. (There are also contemporary references to the likes of Marks & Spencer.) Moreover, Sams may be the only lyricist who has rhymed “foreigner” with “coroner.” The cast is little recognized internationally, and as is often the case with British productions of musicals, they seem to have been selected primarily for their acting prowess. Nevertheless, the singing is fine. In the role of Macheath — a.k.a. Mack the Knife — we have Tom Hollander, one of England’s best actors for several decades, who slashingly delivers all the character’s razor-sharp declarations. This version of the show includes both “Pirate Jenny” and “Barbara Song” in that order, which isn’t the way it’s always done, and even more unusually, Jenny (Tara Hugo) sings what’s now familiar as “Mack the Knife.” (Prior to the chart-topping Bobby Darin recording, it was commonly called the “Moritat.”) More traditionally, Polly (Sharon Small) sings ”Pirate Jenny.”  Musical director Gary Yershon gives the orchestrations lighter readings than others have done. — D.F.

Original Off-Broadway Cast, 1985 (Polygram/JAY) (2 / 5) This three-character musical about the rise and ultimate dissolution of a gifted trio of young comedians has one big problem in that it’s never funny enough. Still, the story holds, supported by a peculiar and distinctive set of songs written in a jazz-rock fusion idiom. The music, by Michael Rupert, is always arresting if not terribly melodic, and it’s bolstered considerably by Michael Starobin’s orchestrations. The characters’ introductory songs are the most satisfactory: “Promise of Greatness” (sung by Scott Bakula) and “Angry Guy” (sung by Jerry Colker). “Operator” sets up the third comic (played by John Kassir), who is the real genius of the group; he becomes more unbalanced as the show unfolds, and he ultimately commits suicide. You may have trouble comprehending some of the lyrics, which often sound more like they were crafted for rock songs rather than theater songs. — David Wolf

Original Cast, 2000 (DRG) (4 / 5) It would be a wonderful thing if more full-length musicals could be as melodic and charming as 3hree, the triumvirate of one-act works that director Harold Prince put together to great acclaim in Philadelphia. Each mini-musical was penned by a different team of up-and-coming young talents. Composer Laurence O’Keefe, lyricist Nell Benjamin, and librettist Julia Jordan wrote the first and most satisfying piece, the darkly comic “The Mice.” It features John Scherer as an exterminator who goes to extreme measures to escape his shrewish wife, played by the delightfully evil Jessica Molaskey. Less impressive overall is the show’s middle section, the ghostly love story “Lavender Girl,” but songwriter John Bucchino’s talent is evident here, notably in the pretty waltz “Dancing.” 3hree‘s showcase piece, “Flight of the Lawn Chair Man,” is based on the true story of a man who soared into the sky on a lawn chair lifted by toy balloons. Songwriter Robert Lindsey Nassif and book writer Peter Ullian’s fanciful work brings Leonardo DaVinci and Charles Lindbergh into the action for comic touches, but it’s in the score’s ballads that Nassif really shines. Christopher Fitzgerald and Donna Lynne Champlin perform “Tiny” and “The Air Is Free” with great sensitivity and great power, respectively. — Brooke Pierce

Original Broadway Cast, 2001 (Swing Music) (1 / 5) In theory, it was an inspired idea to have Harry Connick, Jr. write the score for this Susan Stroman-David Thompson adaptation of Thérèse Raquin, Émile Zola’s tale of love, crime, and guilt. Since the steamy French narrative was to be transplanted to New Orleans, Connick, who was born and raised there and has a command of the city’s indigenous musical idioms, seemed the ideal choice for the project. In practice, however, that choice proved less than ideal. Almost none of the music heard on this hour-plus recording is spicy; most of it is pallid. But the blame for this shouldn’t be pasted on Connick exclusively, as he had Thompson’s inept libretto to work with, and he also had to suffer two miscast leading players interpreting his work. As Therese and her illicit lover, Laurent, Kate Levering and Craig Bierko are as passionate as two glasses of tepid tap water. Norbert Leo Butz, as Therese’s doomed hubby, Camille, delivers two songs that do have a little something extra: the reprise of “It’s Good to Be Home” and “Tug Boat” (Levering duets on the latter). Debra Monk, as Camille’s mother, gets to warble a couple of forgettable Connick tunes. No one who listens to Thou Shalt Not once will want to listen twice. — David Finkle