Steve Schwartz <[log in to unmask]> writes:

>The most elaborate representation on the CD consists of Frankel's
>music for Night of the Iguana, one of the few scores Frankel actually
>kept.  For my money, the movie is pretentious -- worse, old-fashioned
>pretentious -- hokum.  Iguana may be the worst movie John Huston
>(though not its star, Richard Burton) ever made, entirely due to the
>awful Tennessee Williams play on which it's based.  Frankel's music,
>on the other hand, is wonderful, and Huston gives him many opportunities
>to build extended paragraphs.

I'm anything but a film buff; but, entombed last month in an Edinburgh
hotel with no prospect of escape, I caught the opening of "Night of the
Iguana" and stayed hooked until the none-too-bitter end at two in the
morning.

Pretentious? Surely only in a deliciously tongue-in-cheek way.  The
performances from Burton and the women are magnetic, and if this is
Huston's worst film I long to see more.  Frankel's music certainly adds a
dark beauty, though there's not too much of it.  Steve's review whets the
appetite for the whole CD, and I look forward to discovering how Kennaway
managed to join up the dots.

We could do with a CD release of Frankel's grimly powerful late opera,
"Marching Song", squarely based on the John Whiting play.  The BBC ought
to have their very fine premiere performance somewhere in the archives ...

Christopher Webber,  Blackheath, London,  UK.
http://www.nashwan.demon.co.uk/zarzuela.htm
"ZARZUELA!"