Grieg, Edvard - Song of Norway
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One of the fascinating things about the history of musical theatre is how the show that people initially set out to produce often bore little relation to the one that finally opened. That frequently happened to Edwin Lester and one of the most striking examples was Song of Norway.
Who was Mr. Lester? He was a lover of operetta who had stars in his eyes, schmaltz in his heart and-most importantly-money in his pocket. In 1938, he founded the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera and two years later, added an affiliate in San Francisco. The two theatres combined had a powerful subscription base and were capable of generating giant audiences. But Lester also had dreams of conquering Broadway and he felt that he had a singular vision of how to do it. He believed that what audiences needed were the themes of great classical composers bent into the format of operetta-style songs, all wrapped up in a big, lavish package that would feature glorious costumes, endless dances, groan-inducing comedy and lots of romance.
In the middle of World War II, he decided that what would cheer the people of America up the most would be the story of author Hans Christian Andersen set to the music of Edvard Grieg. The fact that Andersen was Danish and Grieg was Norwegian seemed to have slipped right by Lester, or else he lumped them together in his mind under the heading of 'Scandinavian Culture'. What he wasn't able to ignore, alas, was film producer Samuel Goldwyn who was working on his own life story of Andersen. He threatened a lawsuit and Lester withdrew. (The Goldwyn project would finally emerge in 1952 as Hans Christian Andersen, starring Danny Kaye, with a screenplay by Moss Hart and a score by Frank Loesser.) Undeterred, Lester decided instead to use the music of Edvard Grieg to tell the life story of...Edvard Grieg.