Obviously, I have returned from my concert. It was a swell evening and a fine way to bring my Hollywood Bowl season to an end.
Mr. John Mauceri led the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra. The first half consisted of:
Loewe: Gigi--Main Title, Fountain Scene, and Chez Maxim Waltz
Gershwin: An American in Paris
Debussy: Claire de lune
Rozsa: Madame Bovary Waltz
The second half began with an unannounced rendition of Mancini's Theme from The Pink Panther.
Then, Maestro Mauceri and the orchestra accompanied a modern jazz combo from Paris called, appropriately enough, Paris Combo. They played a set of about six songs, which was pleasant enough.
They were followed by some rather exuberant dancers from the Moulin Rouge in Paris, who performed to various excerpts of typical Offenbach can-can music. There were about twenty girls and one boy. The male dancer's unusual terpsichorean feats have led me add double-jointedness to the long list I have been keeping of required qualifications for my next lover.
The official program concluded with the overture to Offenbach's La Vie Parisienne, accompanied by some spectacular fireworks. The pyrotechnicians missed the opportunity to create a red windmill, but they did pull off a kicking can-can dancer.
As an encore, the orchestra played the theme from the first film called Moulin Rouge, which starred, to quote Maestro Mauceri, those two great French actors, Jose Ferrer and Zsa Zsa Gabor.
