Steven Suskin's acclaimed new theatre annual delivers a vibrant, candid, and thoughtful account of every show to hit the boards: exciting musicals such as The Full Monty and the revival of 42nd Street; intriguing new plays like Proof and The Tale of the Allergist's...

It would be difficult, indeed, to imagine anyone more qualified to give us a celebration, from the perspective of an insider, of the Broadway musical. From the first run of Guys and Dolls in 1950 to the recent debut of Rent, Stuart Ostrow, a prot DEGREESD'eg DEGREESD'e of the great composer-lyricist Frank Loesser, has been personally involved in many of the major Broadway productions of our time. The steadily growing number of fans of the Great White Way will delight in his reminiscences about the shows that have shaped musical theater, such as Hello Dolly, Funny...

For Ethan Mordden, the closing night of the hit musical, 42nd St. sounded the death knell of the art form of the Broadway musical. After that, big orchestras, real voices, recognizable books and intelligent lyrics went out the window in favor of cats, helicopters, yodeling Frenchmen, and the roof of the Paris Opera. Mordden takes us through the aftermath of the days of the great Broadway musical. From the long-running Cats to Miss Saigon, Phantom, and Les Miserables, to gems like The Producers, he is unsparing in his look at the remains of the...

."a beautifully balanced assessment.The author has obviously drawn extensively on personal experience and he expresses himself with clarity, precision and a refreshing impartiality.Robinson displays a scrupulous knowledge of the scores and of the ethos of the works in question."

-Jeffrey Joseph, "Music and Musicians," September, 1979. Excerpts from a review of the first edition of "Solti."

When Sir Georg Solti died in 1997 he was at the height of his powers and one of the conducting titans of his generation. The Hungarian-born Solti conducted like a man...

In the 1960s, the Broadway musical underwent a revolution. What was once a form of entertainment characterized by sentimental standards, such as Camelot and Hello, Dolly became one of brilliant and bittersweet masterpieces, such as Cabaret and Fiddler on the Roof. In Open a New Window, Mordden continues his history of the Broadway musical with the decade that bridged the gap between the fanciful shows of the fifties, such as Call Me, Madam, and the sophisticated fare of the seventies, including A Little Night Music and Follies. Here...