Brigadoon (Angel Records, 1992)

Once in the Highlands, the Highlands of Scotland,
Deep in the night on a murky brae;
There in the Highlands, the Highlands of Scotland,
Two weary hunters lost their way.
And this is what happened,
The strange thing that happened,
To two weary hunters who lost their way."

--Prologue to Brigadoon

The story of Brigadoon, the enchanted village on the Scottish Highlands that only appears from the mists once every hundred years, and the love story that unfolds when a pair of lost American hunters happen upon it, is so familiar that I've always assumed it had its roots in old Scottish folklore or the Brothers Grimm. Not so, it turns out: the story's roots are German, from a short story called "Germelshausen", and the action of the story was transported to Scotland by lyricist Alan Jay Lerner, because Scotland is the home of one of Lerner's heroes, Sir James M. Barrie (the writer of Peter Pan).

It's amazing what one can learn by reading the liner notes!

In this case, the liner notes are to a 1992 operetta-style rerecording of the complete score of Brigadoon. Operetta-style (and, in some cases, full-fledged operatic) rerecordings of Broadway classics have become quite frequent in recent years, with such shows as Oklahoma!, The Sound of Music, West Side Story, and My Fair Lady getting the treatment, with excellent singers and orchestras. In most cases, these recordings strive to create their own impressions of the shows in question, as opposed to trying to recreate the magic of the original casts. Sometimes the effect can be a bit jarring -- hearing Kiri Te Kanawa sing "I Could Have Danced All Night", from My Fair Lady, after a lifetime of hearing the original Julie Andrews version (or Marni Nixon's), is a good example -- but in other cases, the new recording has a vitality all its own. That is the case with this incarnation of Brigadoon.

Many listeners, if they are familiar with Brigadoon at all, will be familiar with it not through the actual stage version but through the 1954 film starring Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse. This was certainly the case with me, and this recording was therefore packed with surprises.

First are all the wonderful Lerner-and-Loewe songs that didn't make it into the film in the first place: love songs like "Come To Me, Bend To Me" and "There But For You Go I" were excluded due to running time concerns, and a pair of songs with racy content ("The Love of My Life" and "My Mother's Wedding Day") were censored before filming ever took place. It's fascinating to listen to "The Love of My Life", with its intricate and suggestive word-play, full of puns and entendres, and reflect on the fact that Brigadoon comes from an age when the original Broadway performer found those lyrics almost too embarrassing to perform.

The songs that made it to the film, though, are also quite different. "The Heather on the Hill" and "Almost Like Bein' In Love", in the film, are both sung entirely by Gene Kelly and then serve as underscore for a pair of dance numbers. (Not to belittle this. Few things in this world are more magical than a Gene Kelly dance number.) Here, though, these songs are revealed in their original conceptions as love duets between Tommy and Fiona, which has the effect of making Fiona more of a musical partner in the proceedings. The lyrics of "I'll Go Home With Bonnie Jean" are also different in their original version, and feature a couple of extra verses.

The recording itself is excellent -- one of the best I've heard, in fact. The sound is bright, warm and theatrical, and even in the largest of the ensemble numbers maintains clarity of detail such that individual voices in the chorus can be discerned. And in the softest passages, the recording achieves a hushed intimacy that is also crystalline in its clarity. This is most clear toward the beginning, when Tommy and Jeff are talking in the woods, and then they hear, off in the distance, the softest chorus I've ever heard on CD, singing "Brigadoon". The performers are all first-rate, particularly Rebecca Luker as Fiona. She gives her songs just enough Scottish brogue to suggest the effect, without laying it on too thick. No James Doohan-style Scottish histrionics here, just excellent diction with the right hint of accent.

The CD doesn't present much of the show's dialogue; just a few essential passages in between the numbers to establish the characters and story, plus those passages that actually occur within the songs themselves. The above-mentioned liner notes are excellent, providing the complete lyrics (with helpful synopses to explain the action in spots where the dialogue has been excised) as well as a pair of background essays on the show itself. This is a superb recording, and should be in the collection of anyone interested in Brigadoon, Lerner and Loewe, or even in Broadway in general.