
Billy (1969) - repro
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The short-lived 1969 Broadway musical adaptation of Herman Melville’s classic maritime novel *Billy Budd* infamously collapsed and closed after just one performance at the Billy Rose Theatre. Featuring an inventive, sweeping orchestral score by John Dante and lyrics by Ron Spiro, the grand-scale production tracks a young, innocent, and universally loved British sailor who faces tragic persecution from a pathologically sadistic master-at-arms aboard an 18th-century warship during a time of naval mutinies. Starring Robert Salvio, John Cullum, and Laurence Naismith, this staging remains a legendary curiosity for lyric theater historians.

