Quote:
Originally Posted by chairboys
Santa very kindly dropped a copy of this down the chimney for me at Christmas. I've just listened to it for the first time. Bloody Hell!!
Not sure what to make of it?
The second half, in particular, is just a medley of Jimmy's (great) tunes through the ages. But sung in a strange tongue.
I think I like it but will have to give it a few more plays.
What do others make of it and is it likely to be performed over here?
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I take it you have the Steve Barton version?
Tanz is awesome
A real masterpiece.
It's very unlikely that it will be performed in the UK or the US as it played in America and is the biggest financial flop in Broadway history.
And Broadway has seen some pretty expensive flops.
They gave Michael Crawford (who was playing Von Krolock) creative control and he destroyed it.
I believe he didn't want to be typecast after doing Phantom so he changed the elements of what made Tanz so successful.
Von Krolock became a figure of fun.
Crawford decided to make the count Italian (how the hell does an Italian have the German "Von" in his name?
) because he could, and I quote, "do a funnier accent".
The accent was ridiculous. The original demos in English (done by Steve Barton) are stunning. In between songs he talk with a horrible fake Italian accent, but he drops it when he sings and the results are magnificent.
Crawfords versions of the songs are quite frankly, painful.
One song, A Good Nightmare Comes So Rarely, is so bad that I have to listen to it now and again because I start to believe that it really can't be as bad as I remember, and it always turns out that it's worse
Personally, I refer to Dance Of The Vampires as Carry On Tanz.
Shame it never got a chance to be staged the way it was designed to be
