I believe there are great musicals and fabulous ones. In the latter camp, the premier league, I would place four works that sought to break the boundaries between musical theatre and more serious opera; shows that had something to say engaging heart and head. The Gershwins’ ‘Porgy and Bess’, Kurt Weil’s ‘Street Scene’, Lenny Bernstein’s ‘Candide’ – big scale, ambitious, bursting with invention, melody and a depth of musical artistry fit the bill.

But my favourite in this pantheon is perhaps the least known: ‘The Most Happy Fella’ with music and lyrics by that Broadway genius Frank Loesser. Better known for his ‘Guys and Dolls’ blockbuster, this musical premiered in 1956 was to be his magnum opus. He spent years on the lyrics and music, busting his gut to bring operatic scale and complexity to the popular song-based show. The result is a hugely varied and riotously rich ensemble of catchy tunes like ‘Standing on the Corner’ and ‘Big-D Dallas’ stirred in an astonishing brew of arias, complex duets, trios, delicious quartets, intense operatic soliloquies and beefy choral numbers.

The range of invention here is outstanding. The Act Two quartet, ‘Cold and Dead’ has an aurally stunning key shift that Benjamin Britten would have been proud to write. There is a duet ‘Eyes Like a Stranger’ between Marie and Tony which outclasses anything Sondheim might have written decades later. There is an intensity in the writing that will stir your emotions in a way that you may think only great art music can achieve. This is substantial writing and never once is there any lapse of melodic invention. Loesser also employs that Wagnerian trick of character ‘calling cards’ in the orchestral accompaniment – not just person themes but ones which portray their emotions – a theme for Tony’s yearning to be married or Cleo’s desperate need to quit her exhausting job as a waitress on her aching feet all day (mirrored in the pounding chords).

Another quite brilliant feature of this great show is the quality of the lyrics. The whole show is virtually sung through with just snatches of dramatic dialogue. And in a technique that you may think was invented much later than the 1950s, there is a kind of singspiel mixing song and spoken word. This is not to underestimate Loesser’s trademark deft word craft. As in ‘Guys and Dolls’ he manages to make rhyming, stressed and unstressed lyrics sound like ordinary speech – and because he’s also the composer, the notes fit the words like a softly snug pair of calf leather gloves. Here is an example: Cleo warning Rosabella early on in the show not to trust Tony’s intentions in his gift of a piece of pricey jewellery: ‘He may be a kind of Rasputin / or a small town Jack the Ripper / To start with / He’s a lunatic of a tipper’. In the score the ‘lu’ of ‘lunatic’ is stretched out like a wolf’s howl. I could go on with dozens of such examples.

The original Broadway cast recording on 2 CDs in the early 90s has long been a treasured possession. I play it over and over again and never fail to love every one its 30+ tracks. But I have found a new love – a recording made in the late 90s under the aegis of London-based John Yap who runs Jay Records. He assembled an astonishingly wonderful cast of singers including the late composer’s daughter Emily Loesser in the key role of ‘Rosabella’ and a guest appearance of her mother, Jo Sullivan Loesser who had premiered that same role in that first production. In the part of Tony, the eponymously happy fella from Palermo, now grape farmer in California, is the great Canadian baritone Louis Quilico (in one of his last roles) and a full symphonic orchestra under the baton of John Owen Edwards. This recording features several songs unjustly cut from the 1956 show and ‘Exit Music’ – a kind of overture in reverse. The full blown but sensuously subtle orchestrations by Don Walker are worth the price tag alone.

The later recording (which I hadn’t heard before this week) easily matches the power, lyricism and dramatic tension of the 1956 version. Although Loesser was quick to say this work was not opera but rather a show with just a lot of songs, its ambition in scale and musical inventiveness tells you otherwise.

The musical tells the story of an ageing Italian immigrant farmer (Tony) who tricks a young mail order bride (‘Rosabella’) into marrying him on the basis of a photo he sent of his young handsome farm hand ‘Joe’. Matters intensify back on the farm as Joe seduces the newly arrived bride Rosabella making her pregnant while her old hubby is disabled after a bad accident on his way to meet his wife to be. Here is operatic tragedy, dramatic twists all lightened with a comical subplot involving the former waitress Cleo and the easily put upon farm worker Hermon. Add in further tension as Tony’s sister Marie resents the newly arrived young mail order wife and does everything in her cunning power to oust Rosabella.

I won’t add spoilers to this review but the action winds up to an incredibly tense climax rarely seen in musical theatre – Grand Opera cum Jacobean tragedy meets Broadway. As the intensity dial reaches 11, Loesser adds a highly innovative device; an ‘inner thoughts’ prelude for the orchestra in which the character themes heard earlier are played out in all manner of harmonic variation resolving in a vocal Damascene moment for Tony. It takes your breath away.

The whole cast don’t just sing their parts but powerfully bring their characters to life. If anything their reading of the drama unfolding is more convincing than my 1956 recording. Quilico’s angry reactions to hearing that he’s been cuckolded are more intense than you would ever expect from a ‘musical’. Similarly Emily Loesser balances coy vulnerability with steely resolve (not to mention a gorgeous voice) and Karen Ziemba as Cleo easily matches the power of Susan Johnson’s brassy voiced original. Richard Muenz as Joe brings a more lyrical and intense reading of the ladies’ man than the original big voiced Art Lund. Nancy Shade as Tony’s thwarted sister Marie has high octane operatic power that never feels out of place and her contribution to the bonus tracks, especially the restored numbers will blow your musical socks off.

There really are no weak spots in this astonishing recording (the 3-CD case comes with the full libretto – an unexpected gift). It is a great tribute to Frank Loesser’s half-forgotten masterpiece. I have been playing it over and over again and suffice to say that it has made this reviewer the most happiest of fellas. Fabulous!

‘The Most Happy Fella’ CDTER3 1260 is available from Jay Records https://www.jayrecords.com/