Romberg–NM, Gorgeous Alexander, Encores

One of the joys and one of the thorns encountered when writing a continuing set of posts is the unyielding march of time. I suddenly realized that it is early Monday morning, and we need to continue our exploration of The New Moon. True, the earth will not stop rotating in its orbit if we miss our deadline. But if we can avoid it, we should try.

With that said, it is time to reveal the lyricist for The New Moon. While all of the formal documents indicate that three men wrote the lyrics, Amy Asch explains that two of the three, Frank Mandel and Laurence Schwab, were not known to write lyrics. “It is generally thought that neither Schwab nor Mandel wrote lyrics.” She goes on to provide proof that the third lyricist was the one and only writer of the lyrics.

That man was Oscar Hammerstein II.

Yes, the same man who wrote the lyrics to “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’ ” that we just listened to.

In The New Moon, he was writing lyrics for an operetta and so adopted the opera style of writing. The words are stylized for the genre. But as we shall see, Hammerstein was able to inject a great deal of human suffering into this medium.

Our first song today is a classic “second banana” song, meant for the comic sidekick and his female friend(s). In this case, Robert’s faithful servant, Alexander, has stayed by Robert’s side in his exile in New Orleans. Alexander (played here by Peter Benson) is a hit with the ladies, which does not stand him in high regard with one woman in particular: Julie, played by Lauren Ward.

The song is called “Gorgeous Alexander.”