For ten long years Marcel Prawy, 44, a Vienna-born American, has been a man with a mission. He has yearned to popularize the American musical comedy in Vienna, birthplace and home of the op eretta. But conservative musical Vienna orchestrated (tutti) a violent campaign against Prawy's dream. Composers, academicians and critics decried (sostenuto e fortissimo) the American musicomedy as a purveyor of cheap, foreign, bad music.
Battered but unbowed, Prawy persisted. Finally the state-subsidized Volksoper gave Prawy the downbeat. He picked a 1949 Broadway hit, Kiss Me, Kate.
Brass Bite. Prawy began by putting Sam and Bella Spewack's slangy, sprightly spoof of Shakespeare...
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