The Library is Alive with the Sound of Music

by Beth Cronk, Litchfield head librarian


Have you gone to see Fiddler on the Roof? I haven’t gone yet, but I plan to go so that I can see our library staff member Elle Dinius as Hodel. If the community theater production has gotten you in a musical mood, come to the library to find some CDs and movies to keep it going.

Do you have “Matchmaker” or “If I Were a Rich Man” in your head? We have the original Broadway soundtrack of Fiddler on the Roof on CD at the Litchfield Library. We also have the DVD of the movie, starring Topol. We even have the sheet music, vocal with piano accompaniment, so that you could try playing and singing the songs at home.

Want to go back and revisit last year’s community theater show? We have the DVD of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!, starring Shirley Jones and Gordon MacRae. You can watch Curly ride up on his horse and sing “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’” and most of the cast dance and sing to “The Farmer and the Cowman”.

Are you going to go to Hutchinson community theater’s production of Singin’ in the Rain in August?  You can find Singin’ in the Rain starring Gene Kelly on VHS at our library, although you’d have to still have a VCR to watch it. A new anniversary edition is coming out on DVD, and I plan to get it for us. You can order the DVD currently from other libraries in the system.

Is anyone else excited about the movie version of Les Miserables that’s coming to theaters in December? I can hardly wait. While you’re waiting, you can watch our DVD of Les Miserables in Concert: The 25th Anniversary, Live. The actress who will be playing Eponine in the movie is in the concert. Her performance is breathtaking.

Among our DVDs, you can also find West Side Story, Forever Plaid, The Mikado, Dreamgirls, The Phantom of the Opera, Mary Poppins, Annie Get Your Gun, Cats, Hairspray, The Sound of Music, and Rent. I’m sure there are others I’m forgetting, and there are many more VHS tapes we still have in the collection.

A newly expanded part of our collection is the music CD section. Most of the new additions are popular music, old and new, but you can check out a few cast recordings and musical movie soundtracks. It’s a great way to learn the songs and be ready for a future community theater or high school theater audition. We have original cast recordings for The Music Man, Company, and The Phantom of the Opera, in addition to Fiddler. We have something called A New Recording of the Most Memorable Songs from West Side Story, and there’s a CD set of Showboat performed by the London Symphony Orchestra. Barbra Streisand’s Greatest Hits includes some songs from Funny Girl.

In our book collection, we have a number of scores and books of sheet music from musicals. They’re old, but you can find many of the classics: Annie Get Your Gun, Cabaret, Camelot, Carousel, Guys & Dolls, The King and I, My Fair Lady, and The Sound of Music.

I hope you’ll think of the library when you’re looking for arts, music, and culture in our community.