South Pacific (1958 Film Soundtrack)

This remastered Original Soundtrack Album of South Pacific is very wonderfully done. Lush, beautiful orchestrations go hand in hand with the wonderful singing found herein. Mitzi Gaynor is as nicely suited to the part here as Mary Martin was in the original Broadway version. Rossano Brazzi is wonderful as well, even though his singing is dubbed in by Giorgio Tozzi. Bill Lee steps in here to sing Lt. Cable's songs and is nice... he also did C. Plummer's voice in The Sound of Music.

This new remastered CD is well worth its price and sounds better than ever. Lush gorgeous stereo sound-what are you waiting for?

The Original Cast Album, with Mary Martin and Ezio Pinza, though, will always hold a special place in my heart and is truly the definitive version of South Pacific, but this soundtrack album is definately not bad. It does, of course, put the new TV soundtrack of the Glenn Close production to shame.

The 1958 film version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's SOUTH PACIFIC won an Oscar for its spectacular 6 track Stereophonic Sound Mix, which can be heard on the recent DVD release from Fox Video. Unfortunately, this RCA Victor remastering is from a 40-year-old 2-channel tape, which, while a slight improvement over the earlier CD mastering, simply pales by comparison to the DVD sound. Why RCA didn't remaster this popular album from the original 6 track masters is a mystery. If they had done so about 30 more minutes of music from the film not on the original album could have been accommodated on the CD in addition to the vastly improved sound. Unfortunately, this is typical of today's music industry. They keep doing it over and over until it is finally done right, all at the consumer's expense. Ironically, the DVD can be had for about the same money as this outrageously overpriced CD, with both picture and superior sound. Chalk up another botched effort to RCA/BMG.

I grew up listening to the original Broadway cast recording and have always loved the music, and like everyone else thought Mary Martin was superb. However I believe the film has always received an unnecessarily hard rap. The orchestrations are lush and gorgeous, and all of the singers are wonderful, especially Mitzi Gaynor, the only principal who was not dubbed. Her voice is beautiful and highly expressive. I will never understand the criticism directed towards her by so many, particularly those who say she is too "spunky" in the role. Nelly Forbush is a spunky character, which is what the song "Cockeyed Optimist" is all about! Giorgio Tozzi, who sang for Rossano Brazzi, is an improvement over Ezio Pinza. I can't imagine why Juanita Hall was dubbed, as she was the only member of the Broadway show in the film, but Muriel Smith is very evocative, especially in "Bali Hai." All in all an extremely enjoyable recording of one of the greatest, if not...Read more