Manos Hadjidakis: ILLYA DARLING – Melina Mercouri – Broadway Cast Remix/Remaster

Illya Darling opened on Broadway at the Mark Hellinger Theater on April 11, 1967. It was a stage musical version of the wildly popular Greek film Never On Sunday, which made an international star of Melina Mercouri. The film was written and directed by American Jules Dassin, who also played the male lead. Illya Darling would have many of the same players, including Mercouri, writer/director Dassin, the film’s costume designer, Theoni V. Aldredge, and film cast members Titos Vandis and Despo. The film’s brilliant Academy Award-winning composer, Manos Hadjidakis (Oscar for Best Song – Never On Sunday), wrote the music, with lyrics by Man of La Mancha’s Joe Darion.

The cast also included Orson Bean, Nikos Kourkoulos, Rudy Bond, Hal Linden, and Joe E. Marks. Because of Mercouri’s reviews and star power, the show ran almost a year, and then toured with Cyd Charisse. An original cast album was issued by United Artists Records, who had funded the show in full. In 2010 a limited edition CD (1000 copies), mastered from the original album session tapes was released by Kritzerland in the USA. It sold out very quickly and Illya Darling is now out of print in all formats. This is a completely new remastering from a reel to reel copy of the original UA session tapes, but like the Kritzerland CD, the songs are in the order they appeared in the show. The Oscar winning song, Never on Sunday (Ta Pedi� tou Pire�) is sung by Melina Mercouri exactly as in the film with Greek lyrics written by Hadjidakis (thankfully the horrible Billy Towne English lyrics favoured by pop singers at the time are nowhere to be heard in the stage version.) Hadjidakis was not happy with the way orchestrator Ralph Burns transformed his music into more Broadway than genuine Greek but the sound of bouzoukis is very prominent, something you don’t hear on the New York stage very often and of course with Greece’s National Treasure, Melina Mercouri as the star, Illya Darling still has much to offer musically. It reminds me of what my grandfather once told me when I was a young boy whose family had just migrated to the United States: “To be an American of Greek descent is like putting extra icing on an already well decorated cake”
Illya Darling is musically a very well decorated cake indeed.

Illya Darling (Original Broadway Cast Recording) remixed/remastered
MP3 (320 kbps):
https://mega.co.nz/#!Xo9QwQAY!i2CYEyGaQqzL93fRjoIyq3ylXhj5qC0jwPt9TLK NaZo

Thank you so much for your excellent cake, Stevie.
You’ve done a great remaster once again.
Your uploads and notes make me feel proud to be Greek.
Theoni V. Aldredge (Theoni Athanasiou Vachlioti) was born
in Thessaloniki, the city where I was born and live.

For people who don’t know Melina Merkouri, here is a little
gem with her unique voice:
Stavros Xarhakos – Remember Me (Melina Merkouri) [FLAC]
https://mega.co.nz/#!x4hk2aKS!cOLO-kYT6yqSnNDFnAaQGmokPdVpt0F5zRgzttpiEIQ

Thank you 😀

Love this album. The bouzoukis in the Taverna Dance are worth the price of the CD. Having been stationed in Greece for 18 months twenty years ago, I never tire of listening to music of the bouzoukis. This album is hard to find, but not impossible, and worth owning, whether you like Broadway show tunes, Greek music, or – best of all – Melina Mercouri. She was one of a kind.

Thanks for this!

Thanks.

wonderful thank you

thanks a lot

Efjarist�!

Thank you

Thank you share!

Thank You!

Between you and turner6, you’ve both pretty much got this musical scene owned.
Yet another quality share.
Many thanks indeed.

Oh! and by the way, your intro info’s are most enducational.
Thanks for this.

Oh! and by the way,
Thanks Petros for the ‘Stavros Xarhakos – Remember Me (Melina Merkouri)’ link.
(Also Mikis Theodorakis’s ‘Z and Serico’ are the amongst the best OST’s I’ve ever come across.)