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For those of you who are progressive aficionados of classical music and/or American musical theatre...

In 1976, Leonard Bernstein and Alan Jay Lerner collaborated on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, a musical that examined the establishment of the White House and its occupants from 1800 to 1900. In the giddiness of the bicentennial year, Broadway was expecting a robust patriotic celebration of America by a pair of musical theatre titans. What they got was a complex, disjointed work that focused on race relations and addressed the paradoxical wonders of the American experience in a way that theatergoers of the time were unprepared to accept, especially given the fatal flaws in Lerner's clunky, pedantic book. Following a traumatic out-of-town tryout period, the show began two weeks of previews, opened on May 4, 1976 and closed within the week after seven difficult performances. Bernstein refused to permit a cast recording and even recycled material from the show into his later classical compositions.

As with many Broadway flops (think Carrie, The Musical), the legend of the show has persisted over the years within the odd little community of Musical Theatre buffs and Bernstein devotees. One ballad from the show, "Take Care of This House" (sung by the character of Abigail Adams) has become a part of the soprano repertory and is heard in recitals and at musical theatre conservatories around the country. In 1997, Charlie Harmon (a former music editor of the Bernstein estate) and Sid Ramin (an original orchestrator of the show) fashioned the surviving material into a 90-minute concert piece they named, A White House Cantata. The cantata received good notices at its London debut and received a lovely recording by Deutsche Grammophon 2000 with Thomas Hampson and June Anderson in the lead roles. However, as with so many other contemporary large-ensemble concert works, subsequent performances have been few and far between, especially since the work still bears the scars of its ignoble birth. This week, the Collegiate Chorale and the Orchestra of St. Luke's presented the New York premiere of the cantata. (reviewed HERE...)

Those interested in the work hoping to find the youthful post-war romanticism of West Side Story or the charming wit of My Fair Lady will be disappointed. Aside from reflecting the pallor of Watergate and Vietnam, Lerner was fighting long-standing substance abuse issues and Bernstein was so busy with his conducting career that it was difficult for him to focus his waning, but still formidable, creative energies. The work in many ways resembles Bernstein's Mass as a jumble of pastiche American styles, including a notorious satiric minstrel number that can still be perceived as offensive by those with a constrained sense of irony.

But if you're seeking a cathartic musical embodiment for the frustrations of the past seven years and the rancor of this year's presidential primary, The White House Cantata may be the piece for you.

The recording is apparently out of print, although when I last checked there were some copies still available from Amazon.com. The CD is also still listed for sale on the official Leonard Bernstein website.