September 22
IF I WERE A RICH MAN DAY
In the tradition of the Broadway stage, the lights lowered, the curtain rose and Zero Mostel
stepped into the spotlight as the fiddler played. “Tra-a--a-dition,” he sang, as he began
the first of 3,242 performances of Fiddler on the Roof. The musical opened on Broadway this day in
1964.
The story of Tevye (brilliantly played by Mostel), a poor Jewish milkman with five daughters, takes place in a small Russian village in the late 1890s. He sings and dances his way through the tragedies and comedies of a father fighting for tradition in a changing world. “To life,” he sang, as the music of Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick made the stories by Sholem Aleichem come alive. And he brought tears to audiences eyes with the poignant, Sunrise, Sunset, and laughter, too, with the memorable, If I were a Rich Man -- which surely made Zero Mostel a wealthy man. |
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