Last night, around 7:30 I got an email from a friend who's doing the 1925 Rodgers & Hart show
DEAREST ENEMY in Akron, Ohio, where the show gave its first performances. When I restored the show in 2001 for the Richard Rodgers Centennial, it was performed in spring 2002 by the Village Light Opera Group. Mary Rodgers wanted the show recorded, ut it never happened. When we finally recorded the show in Dublin in August 2012, I spent some time going through the materials and revising some things. To my surprise, after the recording was released, the REodgers & Hammerstein Organization never asked for the recording materials nor made any effort to put the show into their theatre library. When I closed up the office in 2015, I boxed up the cleaned up scores and parts and sent them to the Miami University Library, which holds much of my work.
Then out of the blue several years later, I got a request for the materials from someone at the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization demanding the materials ("We own them"), and I had to ask the Miami Library to return them to Rodgers & Hammerstein. Last year, I learned the materials are now available for performance through Concord Theatricals, only I learned last night that the materials are a screwed up mess of both 2002 and 2012 orchestra parts and scores. So, hopefully today Concord and I will straighten out the mess.
https://www.concordtheatricals.com/p/97572/dearest-enemy
