Lute Song (musical)

Lute Song
Decca Records release
Music	Raymond Scott
Lyrics	Bernard Hanighen
Book	Sidney Howard Will Irwin
Basis	Pi-Pa-Ji by Gao Ming
Productions	1946 Broadway

Lute Song is a 1946 American musical with a book by Sidney Howard and Will Irwin, music by Raymond Scott, and lyrics by Bernard Hanighen. It is based on the 14th-century Chinese play Tale of the Pipa (Pi-Pa-Ji) by Gao Ming. Though not a great success, the show is significant for Mary Martin's meeting of then-unknown cast member Yul Brynner, whom she later recommended to her friends Rodgers and Hammerstein for the role of the Siamese monarch in the classic The King and I, which premiered on Broadway in 1951. It was also the only Broadway appearance of future U.S. First Lady Nancy Reagan.

Cyril Birch, collaborator in a translation of The Peach Blossom Fan, wrote that presumably the basis of the American play was the 1846 Antoine (A. P. L.) Bazin French translation of the Chinese play Tale of the Pipa.

The plot focuses on Tsai-Yong (Cai Yong), a young student who leaves his wife Tchao-Ou-Niang and parents to make a name for himself. He becomes a notable magistrate, but when he marries Princess Nieou-Chi, he is forbidden by her father to contact his family. His impoverished parents die of starvation during a famine, and Tchao-Ou-Niang is forced to sell her hair to pay for their funeral. She ultimately is reunited with her husband by Nieou-Chi, and is welcomed to the palace as his #1 wife.