Novelist Philip Roth called it “shtetl kitsch,” and writer Cynthia Ozick said it was an “emptied-out, prettified romantic vulgarization” of Sholem Aleichem’s work. Even if it wasn’t entirely true to its source material, Fiddler on the Roof did tackle the hard truths of a vanishing world: the universal (and eternal) generational battle between tradition and assimilation. And what some worried was “too Jewish” has become one of the most popular musicals in Japan and around the world.
In 1961, lyricist Sheldon Harnick and composer Jerry Bock began meeting with librettist Joseph Stein to adapt Sholem Aleichem’s short stories. Their musical adaptation is an amalgam of the eight tales in Tevye the Dairyman, focusing on Tevye’s attempts to maintain his family’s religious and cultural traditions as outside influences encroach upon their lives in czarist Russia at the turn of the 20th century. The writers considered calling the show simply Tevye, before landing on a title suggested by Marc Chagall’s paintings, which also inspired Boris Aronson’s set design.
When original producer Fred Coe dropped out, Harold Prince stepped up and brought in director-choreographer Jerome Robbins. During rehearsals, lead actor Zero Mostel openly feuded with Robbins, whom he disliked because of his cooperation with the HUAC, while Robbins fought with Mostel over his improvisations of the dialogue and blocking. As the show progressed through tryouts in Detroit and Washington, Stein wrote five drafts of the book and Bock and Harnick wrote (and tossed most of) some 50 songs.
The show opened on Broadway on September 22, 1964, starring Mostel as Tevye, Maria Karnilova as his wife Golde, and Beatrice Arthur as Yente the matchmaker. It was nominated for ten Tonys, winning for best musical and eight other awards (including trophies for Prince, Mostel, Karnilova, Robbins, Stein, and Bock & Harnick). The production ran for a record-setting 3,242 performances, winning a special Tony in 1972 upon becoming the longest-running show in Broadway history, a record it held until 1979, when Grease surpassed it.
The original cast album spent 204 weeks on the Billboard charts, peaking at #7. It was nominated for a Grammy as best score from an original cast show album (losing to Funny Girl) and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998. In 2020, the Library of Congress selected the album for preservation in its National Recording Registry.
The original London production opened in 1967 and played for 2,030 performances, starring Topol (Tevye) and Miriam Karlin (Golde). Topol also played Tevye in the 1971 film adaptation, directed by Norman Jewison, with Stein providing the screenplay. It became the highest-grossing film of 1971 and received eight Oscar nominations, including best picture.
After listening to the original cast album, learn more about the history of Fiddler by reading The Making of a Musical (1971) by Richard Altman or Barbara Isenberg’s Tradition! (2014) and watching Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles, a 2019 documentary film by Max Lewkowic.
NEXT, for another masterful literary adaptation, listen to Man of La Mancha, with a book by Dale Wasserman (which he adapted from his 1959 teleplay I, Don Quixote, based on the mammoth 1615 novel Don Quixote by Cervantes) and a score by Mitch Leigh and Joe Darion. The original cast recording with Richard Kiley is definitive. The film and revival cast recordings are disappointing.
THEN, explore Les Misérables, an adaptation of Victor Hugo’s sprawling 1862 novel that began as a 1980 French concept album by Claude-Michel Schönberg, Alain Boublil, and Jean-Marc Natel, then was translated and adapted for the English stage by Herbert Kretzmer, Trevor Nunn, John Caird, and James Fenton. Among the unnecessary range of recordings, the choice is ultimately between Patti LuPone in the London cast or Randy Graff in the New York cast. Both women are effective as Fantine, but I favor the Broadway recording, since it includes Valjean’s “Bring Him Home.”