Pygmalion1.0191_Loewe

Pygmalion1.0191_Loewe

OxfordMusicOnline
OGCMA s.v. "Pygmalion"
Classical Sources:
Ovid Met. 10.243-98
Apollodorus Libr. 3.14.3

My Fair Lady, musical comedy, by Frederick Loewe and Alan Jay Lerner, after Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion. First performed 15 Mar 1956.

Prof. Henry Higgins is a professor of phonology who creates a lady of Eliza Doolittle.

Many versions of the story exist; many seem ignorant of their classical forebear. Bernard Shaw's classic stage-pla builds most creatively upon the myth, and it forms the basis of F. Loewe's popular musical My Fair Lady. Since the musical makes no overt allusion to Pygmalion or the myth, one may wonder whether its creators know of the classical ancestory of their plot.

Vintage poster for the musical "My Fair Lady" featuring Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews as marionettes

Original cast featured Rex Harrison as Higgins and Julie Andrews as Eliza and Stanley Holloway as Pickering.

The 1964 MGM film won 8 Oscars (imdb), but drew criticism for substituting Julie Andrews from the Broadway cast, inserting Audrie Hepburn with Marni Nixon's uncredited vocal talents for Eliza.

OGCMA slides are designed by Roger T. Macfarlane for use in Classical Civilization 241 courses at Brigham Young University.
The present resource contains information assembled for The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, 1400 – 1990’s, edited by J. Davidson Reid (Oxford 1994), and it is used with express permission from Oxford University Press.
Address concerns or inquiries to macfarlane@byu.edu.