World Premiere: The Ambassador Revue - a Lost Cole Porter Revue at Minnsky Theatre

When the Jazz Age crossed over to France in the 1920s Cole Porter was in the center of it all. Porter's original production of La Revue des Ambassadeurs was mounted at Paris's hottest nightclub, Cafe des Ambassadeurs, in 1928. It was produced by Edmund Sayag, the Ziegfeld of Paris, with a score of twenty-four songs by Cole Porter, and written for a Parisian audience with an all-star American cast of fifty.  This production combined choreography by George Hale, costuming by Dolly Tree, and orchestration by Fred Waring, creating a stunning performance that ran for a showstopping year! Then, tragedy struck when the score of the show was lost to a box in storage and fell into oblivion until a stroke of musical theatre luck.

Over 80 years later, in 2012, most of the original score was rediscovered in the archives of its publisher by musicologist/author Ken Bloom and theatre historian Christopher Mirambeau. Using musical arrangements by Tony Award nominee Larry Blank, that year a concert revival was staged in Paris at Opera de Renaes and was broadcast by France Musique. 

Not to be outdone, in 2013  musical theatre historian Ken Bloom brought the show to the U.S. for the first time, calling it The Ambassador Revue. With the help of bandleader Vincent Giordano, and the discoveries in the Fred Waring archives at Penn State, additional numbers were added back into the show over the course of the year. It was then presented in 2014 for a one-night only sold-out concert performance at the Town Hall in NY. 

In 2017, Legacy Musical Theatre received permission from the Cole Porter Foundation to finally present a fully-staged revival of The Ambassador Revue. After two years of archival work, utilizing orchestra arrangements by Fred Waring and Larry Blank, Legacy Musical Theatre was able to piece together the full production arrangement to create a 2019 World Premiere of the rediscovered Cole Porter sensation The Ambassador Revue. 

This production features a massive artistic collaboration of over forty performers, dancers, directors and artists ‒– bringing together Legacy Musical Theatre, vaudeville revival house Minnsky Theatre, an all-star cast of Minnesota singers featuring professional showgirl troupe The ExperTeasers and The Minnesota Dance Collaborative. This show has staging and choreography by Jac Fatale, Shelli Manzoline, Holly Bryant, and special guest choreographer Bette Darrell (91 years young). It has Musical Direction by Samantha Laumann, assisted by Danny Glass. International celebrity artist Anthony Raymond Whelihan has created a portrait of Cole Porter specifically for this 2019 world premiere of The Ambassador Revue. This piece will be featured at a silent auction during the show’s run and proceeds will benefit the charitable institutions Interact Center for the Visual and Performing Arts and Minnesota Dance Collaborative.