Lehman Engel (born September 14, 1910,
Jackson, Mississippi; died August 29,
1982, New York City) was an American composer and conductor of plays, television, and film. He also conducted many Broadway musicals,
both on stage and on records.
Work in theatre, television and films
Engel worked in a variety of positions on television specials. He was composer and conductor of the music for the famed 1954
television production of Shakespeare's Macbeth, starring Maurice Evans and
Judith Anderson, but did not work on the 1960
remake starring the same two actors. He was conductor of the first (and so far, the only)
television version of Leonard Bernstein's Wonderful Town (1958) (TV), as well
as, in the preceding years, of Twelfth Night in 1957 and the TV version of The Taming of the Shrew in 1956.[1] He also conducted the music for the Broadway musical version of Lil' Abner, as well as the 1959 motion picture adapted from the
show.
Lehman Engel also composed the music for the 1939 Broadway revival of Hamlet, starring
Maurice Evans, as well as for the original 1948 stage production of Maxwell Anderson's
Anne of the Thousand Days, starring Rex
Harrison and Joyce Redman.
The BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop
Engel founded the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater
Workshop, a workshop in New York for musical
theatre composers, lyricists and
librettists.
Lehman Engel worked as musical director for the St. Louis Municipal Opera for a number
of years before moving to New York to conduct on Broadway. He won 6 Tony Awards, and was nominated for 4 more. The category for which he won and was nominated no longer exists.
Recordings
Engel also conducted the first 3-LP version of Gershwin's opera Porgy and Bess, a 1951 Columbia Masterworks
Records album which was highly acclaimed, but did not, as advertised, really feature the complete opera. The mono
recording, starring Lawrence Winters and Camilla
Williams, was eventually released on CD. It was the longest Porgy and Bess album made up to that time (129
minutes), and would remain so for many years, until it was superseded in the 1970's by two complete recordings of the opera which
both won Grammys.
Between the late 1940's and early 1950's, together with Columbia Records executive Goddard
Lieberson, Engel conducted what were then the most complete recordings of several classic Broadway musicals of the past,
many of which were appearing as albums for the first time - among them Girl Crazy
(with Mary Martin), Oh, Kay! (with Barbara Ruick and Jack Cassidy), Babes in Arms (again featuring Cassidy and Mary Martin) and Pal Joey (musical) (with Harold Lang and Vivienne Segal). All of these were studio recordings, not original cast albums. The Pal Joey
recording was so successful that it actually led to a major, long-running revival of the show in 1952, with the same two stars
who had appeared on the album.
He also conducted what were then the most complete recordings of The Student
Prince, in 1952, and Show Boat, in 1956.
All of these recordings (except for Engel's Show Boat) were eventually issued on CD and were classics in their
time.
As Author
Engel also wrote several books on musical theatre. One of them, The Americal Musical Theatre: A Consideration, was
perhaps the very first book to discuss in detail the writing of a Broadway musical, the elements that went into it, and the art
of adapting "straight" plays into musicals.
Engel was close friends with Pablo Picasso. He also mentored Stephen Flaherty.
References
- ^ Lehman Engel at the Internet Movie Database
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
