Composer Irving Berlin's "Call Me Madam" premiered on Broadway in 1950 with Ethel Merman and Paul Lukas originating the roles of Sally Adams (based on real-life Perle Mesta, the American socialite and diplomat dubbed "the hostess with the mostes'" for her lavish Washington, D.C., parties) and the foreign prime minister, Cosmo Constantine.
In the story, Sally is appointed ambassador to the fictional European country of Lichtenburg, her brash outspokenness providing a stark contrast to the refined diplomats around her. Early in the first act, Sally offers U.S. foreign aid to the Lichtenburg prime minister, singing "Can You Use Any Money Today?", trying to convince him to accept a loan of millions of dollars.
"Can you use any money today?
You can take any money you say!
Just a little cash,
Just a little dough,
And I can make it grow!"
2. How Could I Ever Know?
Answer: The Secret Garden
Based on Frances Hodgson Burnett's 1911 novel, "The Secret Garden" premiered on Broadway in 1991, with lyrics and book by Marsha Norman and music by Lucy Simon. It tells the story of young orphan who brings life and healing to her uncle's grief-stricken household after she discovers a long-forgotten garden.
Lily Craven, a spirit character who died before the story begins, watches over her husband Archibald and their sickly son Colin. The song "How Could I Ever Know?" comes near the finale: Lily's spirit appears to Archibald as he struggles with guilt and sorrow over her death. Lily comforts him, urging him to forgive himself, to love his son, and to live again.
"All I need... Is there in the garden!... Is care for the child of our love!"
3. Is It Really Me?
Answer: 110 in the Shade
The musical "110 in the Shade" is based on N. Richard Nash's 1954 play "The Rainmaker" and premiered on Broadway in 1963, with Harvey Schmidt's music and Tom Jones' lyrics. Set in a drought-stricken small town in the American Midwest during the 1930s, the musical centers on Lizzie Curry, a plain, but strong-willed woman who lacks confidence in her own beauty and worth, who meets Starbuck, a charismatic con man who claims he can bring rain to end the drought. In Act II, a turning point comes when Lizzie has a moment of self-recognition and transformation and sings "Is It Really Me?"
"Is it really me?
Am I really beautiful?"
4. Mother, Did You Watch?
Answer: Love Never Dies
"Love Never Dies" was Andrew Lloyd Webber's sequel to "The Phantom of the Opera", and premiered in London in 2010. Glenn Slater and Charles Hart wrote lyrics for the show. The story takes place roughly 10 years after the events of "The Phantom of the Opera" in Coney Island, at the Phantasma amusement park, where Meg Giry, Christine Daae's friend from the Opera house in Paris, headlines as a burlesque performer. Christine, meanwhile, is a world-famous soprano and married to Raoul, with whom she has a son, Gustave. They travel to Coney Island where Christine is to perform "Love Never Dies", a new aria written for her by a mysterious new impresario, who is revealed to be the Phantom, the owner of Phantasma.
Meg Giry, meanwhile, has performed a song hoping that it will win the approval of her mother, Madam Giry, as well as "The Master's" (The Phantom) attention. Meg and her mother sing a duet, "Mother, Did You Watch?" in which her mother dashes Meg's hopes, declaring that she and Meg have been replaced by Christine who garnered the Phantom's attention exclusively.
Meg: "Mother, did you watch? Everything is sold... The new routine, it went so well!"
Madame Giry: "He never came... It was for nothing."
Meg's final, distraught cry, "No!" ends the song.
5. What Do I Need With Love?
Answer: Thoroughly Modern Millie
With music by Jeanine Tesori, lyrics by Dick Scanlan, and a book by Dick Scanlan and Richard Morris (adapted from the 1967 film's screenplay), "Thoroughly Modern Millie" had its Broadway premiere in 2002. The story is set in the Roaring Twenties, and follows a small-town girl named Millie Dillmount who moves to New York City looking to marry for money instead of love. Paperclip salesman Jimmy Smith is a playful, carefree bachelor who encounters Millie after she gets mugged, and then again later at a speakeasy. It hits him hard that he's in love with her.
He sings "What Do I Need With Love?", at first listing why he's glad to be unattached: "What do I need with love? / Life is a simple thing, I'm already having a fling or two..." and "Always practice what I preach / Keep temptation out of easy reach / Stick to dolls who wash their hair in bleach"; as the song continues, however, he faces the truth that he's in love with Millie: "Although I hardly know you / What do I need with love? / I got it good / Got it good / But now I got it bad!
6. What Is This Thing Called Love?
Answer: Wake Up and Dream
"What Is This Thing Called Love?" is just one of three questioning songs from the Cole Porter musical "Wake Up and Dream", the other two being "Which Is the Right Life?" also written by Cole Porter, and "Why Wouldn't I Do?" with music and lyrics by Desmond Carter and Ivor Novello.
The musical was the last Broadway show to open in the 1920s (December 30, 1929). The musical was more of a revue than a story, with "What Is This Thing Called Love?" being the most famous song. It has since become a jazz standard-and on February 15, 1930, Leo Reisman and His Orchestra, featuring Lew Conrad singing, were the first recording artists to place "What Is This Thing Called Love" on the pop charts, rising to number five, 11 months after it was introduced in the musical.
7. Who Will Love Me as I Am?
Answer: Side Show
"Who Will Love Me as I Am?" is from the musical "Side Show" with music by Henry Krieger, and lyrics and book by Bill Russell. It premiered on Broadway in 1997, telling the true story of conjoined twins, joined at the hip from birth, named Daisy and Violet Hilton, who were performers in the United States during the 1930s. They were talented singers and dancers, struggling to be accepted both as individuals and as women seeking love and a normal life. They performed in vaudeville, but later became carnival "freak show" stars.
The song, sung as a duet, comes at the finale of Act I, and asks the question if anyone could ever love them beyond their physical connection:
"Could we bend the laws of nature?
Could a lion love a lamb?
Who could see beyond this surface?
Who will love me as I am?"
8. Who Would've Thought?
Answer: The Goodbye Girl
Based on the 1977 movie that won Richard Dreyfuss a Best Actor Oscar, "The Goodbye Girl" stage musical made its Broadway premiere in 1993, starring Bernadette Peters (as Paula McFadden) and Martin Short (as Elliot Garfield), in the roles played by Marsha Mason and Dreyfuss.
The film script and musical book are both by Neil Simon. Lyrics are by David Zippel and music is by Marvin Hamlisch. The film's premise remains intact for the stage: a former dancer, now a single mother, is abandoned by her actor boyfriend, leaving her in a Manhattan apartment.
Then, a struggling actor shows up with a lease for the same apartment. They start off shakily but agree to share the apartment. Then fall in love. "Who Would've Thought?" comes in Act II, when their bickering has morphed into true love, and sing a duet: "Who would've thought we'd end up together,
Not you, not me, not anyone..."
9. Who's That Woman?
Answer: Follies
Master composer Stephen Sondheim's 1971 "Follies" about getting older, memory, and the past, opened on Broadway in 1971 with a book by James Goldman. The story takes place in a worse-for-wear Broadway theater scheduled for demolition, and where several former showgirls from the fictitious Weismann Follies Ziegfeld-style revue reunite years later to reminisce about their glory days. Each of the showgirls confronts her younger self and questions the choices she'd made in her youth.
"Who's That Woman?" is sung by the aging former showgirl Stella Deems in Act I, as she teaches her old dance routine to the other women, and as the routine unfolds, the younger performers join in and the dancing becomes perfectly synchronized:
"Who's that woman? I know her well / All decked out head to toe / She lives life like a carousel / Bow after bow after bow."...
"Who's that woman? / She's marvelous! / Who's that woman? / It's me!"
10. Why God Why?
Answer: Miss Saigon
The story of "Miss Saigon" is inspired by "Madama Butterfly", but transplants the scenario from Japan to the final days of the Vietnam War, in which an American soldier named Chris, meets Kim, a young Vietnamese woman working in a Saigon bar/brothel called Dreamland run by a man called The Engineer. Chris falls in love with Kim amid the chaos around them, and he sings "Why God Why?" immediately after his first night with Kim. He asks existential questions about Vietnam and intimate ones about the timing of this love.
"Why God Why,
This feeling inside me,
When all of the world is so sad?"
This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor looney_tunes before going online.
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