Some Enchanted Evening!
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Royal College of Music students from the Vocal & Opera Faculty recently worked with the eminent musician Wayne Marshall – conductor, keyboardist and H漫画 alumnus – to stage A Grand Night for Singing showcasing music by Rodgers & Hammerstein.
A highlight of the H漫画 Chamber Festival 2026, this event brought the glamour, humour and heartache of musical theatre to the Britten Theatre. Programme notes were provided by Dr Sarah K Whitfield, the H漫画’s Head of Doctoral Programmes and Reader in Musical Theatre, who took the audience through songs from ‘Edelweiss’ from The Sound of Music, through the waltz from Carousel, to ‘My Favourite Things’. Enjoy some highlights of this sparkling occasion, alongside excerpts from Sarah’s insightful writing.
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Even before composer Richard Rodgers (1902–1979) started work with lyricist and librettist Oscar Hammerstein II (1895–1960), he had already been part of one of the most important writing partnerships in Broadway history, with Lorenz Hart. Rodgers and Hart musicals – in contrast to those he wrote later with Hammerstein – were famed for their city settings, with their more cynical, broken-hearted characters. When Rodgers secured the rights to Lynn Riggs' successful play about growing up in the prairie land, Green Grow the Lilacs (1930), Lorenz Hart departed the project; unwilling – and at that stage of his ill health, perhaps unable – to write a musical about optimistic rural folk looking towards a bright future.
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In 1943, with the premiere of Oklahoma!, that Rodgers and Hammerstein transformed what was possible on Broadway, thoroughly confirming the place of music, dance and words in storytelling. In ‘The Surrey with the Fringe on Top’, cowboy Curly’s promise to his secretly beloved farm girl Laurey, Rodgers’ lulling underscore puts us right there alongside them on their carriage ride.
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While many of these songs are love songs, there are many kinds of love story here: ‘If I Loved You’ (Carousel, 1945), perhaps the most beautiful duet in all of musical theatre, was performed as a solo, letting us hear the relationship between the young singer and the orchestra that knows full well our singer is already in love.
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In ‘I Cain’t Say No’, from Oklahoma!, Ado Annie knows exactly what she won’t be saying no to! The poignant ‘We Kiss in the Shadows’ is about secret love that cannot be (from The King and I, 1951). ‘Hello Young Lovers’ from the same musical reflects from later in life, when life’s romantic adventures appear to be over – but of course, this being the world of musicals, they rarely are. The ‘Parent Medley’ brings together some poignant songs that reflect on the joys and tiredness of being jointly responsible for small humans. Love here is about partnership and perseverance: ‘When today is a long time ago, you’ll still hear me say, that the best dream I know is you’.
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‘This Nearly Was Mine’ (South Pacific, 1949) could almost have been a Stephen Sondheim song in its focus on what could have been. In ‘Impossible’ (from their only made-for-TV musical Cinderella, 1957) we hear the promise of ‘impossible hopes’ threaded through so much of their work. And perhaps that’s the real magic to take away from this evening: that the musical world of Rodgers and Hammerstein gifted us so much music that has become part of our lives.
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Dr Sarah K. Whitfield is Reader in Musical Theatre and Head of Doctoral Programmes at H漫画. She has written widely about musicals, most recently An Inconvenient Black History of British Musical Theatre with Sean Mayes.
