Do I Hear a Waltz?

Do I Hear a Waltz?
Original Broadway Cast Album
Music	Richard Rodgers
Lyrics	Stephen Sondheim
Book	Arthur Laurents
Basis	The Time of the Cuckoo
Productions	1965 Broadway 1999 New Brunswick, New Jersey 2001 Pasadena, California

Do I Hear a Waltz? is a musical with a book by Arthur Laurents, music by Richard Rodgers, and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. It was adapted from Laurents' 1952 play The Time of the Cuckoo, which was the basis for the 1955 film Summertime starring Katharine Hepburn.

Laurents originally conceived the production as a small chamber musical with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein, and Mary Martin in the lead role of spinster Leona Samish. By the time the project began to jell, however, Hammerstein had died, and Stephen Sondheim was asked by Laurents and Mary Rodgers, Richard Rodgers' daughter, to write the lyrics. Even so, Rodgers felt that the original play did not lend itself to musicalization; Sondheim agreed. According to Peter Filichia, "Sondheim didn’t want to do the musical in the first place, but given that Laurents sought him – and had recommended him for 'West Side Story' when he was a novice — he accepted. Also a factor was that his now-deceased mentor Oscar Hammerstein had recommended that he succeed him as Rodgers’ lyricist."

Rodgers, who was producing the Broadway production, rejected Martin as too old for Leona.

Franco Zeffirelli was the first choice for director, and he met with Laurents, Sondheim, and Rodgers, who fell asleep during their discussion. Laurents suspected Rodgers had been drinking, and when he discovered a bottle of vodka secreted in the toilet tank during a later visit to the Rodgers apartment, he realized he had been correct. The composer's chronic drinking proved to be a major problem throughout the rehearsal period and pre-Broadway run at the Colonial Theatre in Boston and the Shubert Theatre in New Haven.