Do I Hear a Waltz? (1964)
Book: Arthur Laurents
Music: Richard Rodgers
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In short: Do I Hear A Waltz? is an almost “forgotten” musical with beautiful music by Richard Rodgers and creative, entertaining lyrics by Sondheim. Despite its lovely moments, the musical never reaches great heights and was created with little enthusiasm.
Even with the Richard Rodgers score, Sondheim has put more psychology into it. […] For me it sparkles because you feel his intelligence, and nothing is ever twee or simple. […] Every sentence reveals something else.
Melissa Errico, actress and singer
Overview Do I Hear a Waltz? - background and excerpts
I cry promptly Mondays at high noon.
Roses are dancing
with peonies
Yes it’s true!
Don’t you see? Everything’s suddenly Viennese,
Can’t be you!
Must be me!
But why be vicious?
They keep it out of sight.
Good show!
They’re gonna be
all right.
I love Americans, and my home is yours.
I can’t be responsible, so lock your doors.
Do I Hear a Waltz? is perhaps the least well-known musical Sondheim ever worked on. He wrote the lyrics to music by Richard Rodgers (composer of Oklahoma!, The Sound of Music and South Pacific). Despite its many beautiful elements, the musical is generally considered flawed.
Plot Summary
Do I Hear a Waltz? is based on the play The time of the cuckoo by Arthur Laurents, which was adapted into the 1955 film Summertime starring Katharine Hepburn. The protagonist, Leona Samish, is an American secretary who travels to Venice on vacation. There, she meets the charming antique dealer Renato Di Rossi. Although Leona is attracted to Renato, she soon discovers that he is married and has no intention of leaving his wife. As she grapples with her feelings and the reality of the situation, Leona learns that true love can sometimes be out of reach. The musical explores themes of loneliness, romance, self-worth, and the gap between fantasy and reality.
Development
The creation of the musical was plagued with difficulties. Oscar Hammerstein, the intended lyricist, passed away and, before his death, suggested that Sondheim take his place. Hammerstein’s longtime partner, composer Richard Rodgers, was struggling with alcoholism and self-doubt. He refused to rewrite any of the music and was critical of Sondheim’s lyrics. Sondheim took on the project under pressure from Mary Rodgers, out of respect for Hammerstein’s wishes, and with the hope of benefiting financially from the adaptation of a play that had already been made into a movie. Ultimately, there was little affection among the creators, either for each other or for the musical itself.
Reception
The show received a mix of moderately positive and negative reviews. Although the Broadway production ran for 220 performances, earned three Tony nominations, and saw some songs released as singles and played on the radio, the musical did not recoup its costs, won no awards, and has rarely been revived. The main criticism was that the transformation from play to musical added nothing, and the music served only as a decorative frame. Sondheim shared this critique, later describing the musical as “not a bad show, merely a dead one.”
In the 1990s, Sondheim and Arthur Laurents undertook a major revision of the show. However, revivals remain scarce, and while reviews of these revivals have sometimes been positive, the mismatch between script and music has persisted.
Encores!
Since 1994, New York’s Encores! concert series has reintroduced “forgotten” American musicals for limited runs. This includes Sondheim musicals like Anyone Can Whistle, Merrily We Roll Along and Do I Hear a Waltz?. One of the videos here provides an impression of the 2016 Encores! production, featuring clips from six songs in the show.
We're Gonna Be All Right
The song “We’re gonna be all right” is a fine example of Sondheim’s style as a lyricist. However, the version on this site was never actually included in the musical. After initially praising Sondheim’s lyrics, Richard Rodgers rejected them the next day because his wife, Dorothy, found that they hit too close to home, seeing reflections of her own marriage in the lyrics and perhaps feeling that they implied an acceptance of extramarital affairs and homosexuality.
Other video excerpts (in show's order)
- “Someone woke up” is the first song of the musical, in which Leona arrives in Venice from New York.
- In “This week Americans” she meets Fioria, the owner of her pension. In this comic song, Fioria panders to her new American guests by criticizing all her other guests and their nationalities. At the end of the show, she sings it again, this time adapted for her new guests from England.
- “Someone like you”, with which Renato seduces Leona, was released as a single by Sergio Franchi, who starred in the original production..
- “Take the moment”, where the married Renato invites Leona to let go of her reservations and have an affair with him, showcases Rodgers’s quality and style as a composer.
- The same goes for the title song, “Do I hear a waltz?", a love song between Leona and the Italian Renato. The song received some attention outside the theater, as seen in the clip from The Ed Sullivan Show. It features several inventive rhymes, such as “Danubey”/“can you be” and “peonies”/“Viennese.” The clips include the original cast on The Ed Sullivan Show and George Hearn and Carol Burnett in the revue Putting it together.
Stephen Sondheim about Do I Hear a Waltz?
“The biggest hits, even the most execrable ones, have generally been written by people who loved the story they were telling and how they were telling it. In the sorry case of Do I Hear a Waltz? that category did not include Arthur Laurents, Richard Rodgers or me. The show deserved its failure.
I had learned from observing Lenny [Leonard Bernstein, red.] that there is nothing wrong with falling, as long as you don’t fall from the lowest rung. Do I Hear a Waltz? was the lowest rung. Between it and Anyone Can Whistle I learned that the only reason to write a show is for love – just not too much of it.
Discussing the song “Bargaining” […] I said it was pleasant, but no showstopper. Unfortunately, that describes the whole show. That and the fact that it shouldn’t have been written in the first place. It was my first and only “Why?” musical. Friendship, obligation and greed are not good enough reason to write anything.“
More Do I Hear a Waltz?: audio en video
Go to More Sondheim for our Sondheim Archives.
Reviews of Do I Hear a Waltz?
Original production (1964)
“One admires the self-restraint of the creators of Do I Hear a Waltz?. They were wise not to overload the musical with production numbers; their taste was unexceptionable when they chose not to turn their work into a brash, noisy affair, which would have been out of keeping with their theme. At the same time one cannot suppress a regret that they failed to be bolder. For there are times, particularly in the early stages, when the songs are merely a decoration. They give the impression that they are there because a musical requires music. They do not translate the story into the fresh and marvelous language that the rich resources of the musical stage make possible.
Do I Hear a Waltz? is not a great musical. It does not make Venice materialize in spirit as it might. But it has the courage to abjure garishness and stridency. It speaks and sings in a low key. It is faithful to the sentimental tale that is its source.” – Howard Taubman, New York Times (1965)
Encores! production New York (2016)
“Rodgers and Sondheim famously didn’t get along in their sole collaboration, and the tension is mirrored in the score, which combines the former’s trademark lyricism with the latter’s caustic wit. There are some gorgeous ballads, including “Someone Like You” and “Take the Moment,” beautifully sung by veteran opera singer Troxell, as well as the joyous title song. But there are also such sardonically funny numbers as “This Week’s Americans,” [sic, red.] “What Do We Do? We Fly?” and “No Understand.” None of it registers as among Rodgers or Sondheim’s best work, but even their second-tier material is superior to almost everyone else’s. […] It’s easy to see why Do I Hear a Waltz? failed originally and why it probably couldn’t sustain a commercial run now. But as always, one must be grateful to Encores! for providing the opportunity to reassess this flawed gem. – Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter (2016)
“In its current, beautifully assembled Encores! incarnation, directed by Evan Cabnet, Waltz still comes across as a show about the pursuit of passion that has little passionate urgency itself. As it charts the bumpy course of Leona’s summer love affair, the show feels as anxiously ambivalent as its heroine. Its odds of ever being reborn as a commercial Broadway success are slight. […]I can’t say that this Waltz ever thrilled me. But I was fascinated by every second of it, and by the unresolved conflict of talents it embodies.
As in much of Laurents’s work, the tone of Waltz wobbles between sentimentality and cynicism. The same tension is felt in the songs, with Rodgers and Mr. Sondheim tugging in different directions and ending up in a rather listless draw. Rodgers’s score, although beautifully performed by the Encores! orchestra (directed with charm by Rob Berman), mostly seems to float up a lazy canal, with surprisingly unvaried rhythms. […]
Only occasionally do you hear Mr. Sondheim wielding words with the dexterity for which he is famous. A breakout exception like the devastating ode to marital hypocrisy, “We’re Gonna Be All Right,” feels out of sync with the characters who sing it. […] Every so often, though, a whiff of the “wonderful mystical magical miracle” (to borrow a phrase from Leona) stirs the air. ” – Ben Brantley, New York Times (2016)
