Comparative Critical Analysis

Artefacts:

• The Light in the Piazza (2006 Live from the Lincoln Centre PBS broadcast). Book by Craig Lucas and
Music and Lyrics by Adam Guettel.

• West Side Story (1961 film directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robins.) Music by Leonard Bernstein
and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim with Book by Arthur Laurents.

There are some major thematic and other subtler points of comparison between The Light in the Piazza and West
Side Story including cultural conflicts, the deeply romantic and operatic scores, the "star-crossed lovers"
storyline and how both pay homage to Romeo and Juliet, and the use of artistic expression to transcend language.

While WSS’s plot is based explicitly on Romeo and Juliet, TLITP is peppered with subtler influences of Romeo
and Juliet.The meeting between Clara and Fabrizio makes up a section of the music from song to come, “The
Light in the Piazza”. He sings his name, “Fabrizio” in the same notes that she does at the end of her song “The ‘using’
Light in the Piazza” to which she responds “Clara” in exactly the same phrase that she later sings “my love” at
the end of the song. This reminded me of a musical equivalent of Romeo and Juliet’s meeting. When Romeo
meets Juliet, their speech makes up a sonnet, the traditional poem of love. They are literally speaking to each
other in the language of love, communicating in a higher art form than simple speech. The fact that Clara and
Fabrizio don't speak but sing their introductions to each other, foreshadowing the end of song still to come
artistically reveals that although Clara and Fabrizio don't share a common language, they can still understand
each other on a higher level which is communicated through music. Clara’s earlier solo, “The Beauty Is”,
begins to imply this message as she says, “I don’t understand a word they’re saying…. but the beauty is I still
meet people I know.” Later, in the Act one finale duet “Say it Somehow”, Clara tells Fabrizio “I know you”.
Thus the ability to “feel known” can transcend the physical, and this is what music enables. In this number
Clara and Fabrizio break through their language barrier into a level where only the language of music is
necessary. The vocalise used is utterly sensual, almost certainly serving as a metaphor for sex. As they undress
each other on the bed, their physical relationship transcends the restrictions of conventional language.
its
The way that these musical phrases are foreshadowed during Clara and Fabrizio’s meeting is similar to WSS,
where every major tune appears in some other form before it’s proper introduction. As Joseph P. Swain writes
about WSS in The Broadway Musical: A Critical and Musical Survey, “This curious practice of giving the
listener advance notice of important melodies to come… can only have a dramatic explanation…the forward
How so?
direction of such references builds a sense of destiny…” the use of leitmotifs in WSS help to qualify it as an
opera. Both TLITP and WSS are hybrid works, with one foot in the American musical theatre camp, and the
other firmly within opera.

In WSS dance that serves as a major artistic expressive vehicle for the inarticulate teenagers in their respective
gangs. At the time of WSS’s conception, dance “breaks” were popularly used in musicals as show-stopping
spectacles that did not further the plot, however, the choreography in WSS was famously used as a major
communicative method. The choreography in WSS by Jerome Robbins is intrinsically balletic, which is
considered to be the most controlled, technical, complex, beautiful form of dance, which could also be said about
opera in the vocal world, which is what TLITP strongly draws from. Perhaps this elevates the art to a higher level
by harking back to art at its purest form. There’s an embedded value judgement here - consider instead what this point might say about the
wider traditions which the creators of these two works viewed themselves as operating within.

Both are bilingual shows, with Italian songs in TLITP and Spanish in WSS. Looking back on his lyrics in the
original production of WSS, Sondheim expressed embarrassment for not following the principle that if a character
can't say it, they shouldn't be able to sing it. Maria, for example, is new to America from Puerto Rico and
struggling to learn English. When she sings “I Feel Pretty”, she suddenly breaks into perfectly formed English,
using sophisticated internal rhymes like “pretty and witty” and “alarming how charming”, which seems
inauthentic to the character. With WSS’s 2009 revival, Lin-Manuel Miranda helped to revise the book and lyrics
to incorporate Spanish spoken and sung by the Puerto Rican characters. Bernardo, the proud leader of the Sharks,
refuses to speak English, and leads his gang’s verse in the “Tonight” quintet entirely in Spanish, while Anita,
who wants to leave Puerto Rico, proudly sings “America” in English.

In TLITP, many of the songs sung by Fabrizio’s Italian family are sung completely in Italian, enhancing this
idea of character authenticity and adding to the show’s operatic qualities. Generally, in musical theatre, words
come first, whereas in opera the music is the driving force. As long as you basically know what is going on in
an opera you can be swept away not just by music, but by visceral drama. Fabrizio’s ballad “Clara” (which
is directly comparable to Tony’s ballad of love at first sight “Maria” in WSS) is sung entirely in Italian in a
heightened, dramatic, operatic way and this is (as well as the repetition of the name Clara) how the English
speaking audience understands what is going on.