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Dazzling debuts

By Times staff writer

© St. Petersburg Times, published August 31, 2000


IT HAPPENED ONE THURSDAY

* * *

Broadway discovered this start-the-weekend-early thing decades ago, in large part because an official opening on Thursday garners a review in the Friday newspaper.

Rex Harrison grew accustomed to Julie Andrews' face when they debuted on Broadway in My Fair Lady Thursday, March 16, 1956.

Jerome Robbins' West Side Story made its Broadway entry Thursday, Sept. 26, 1957, and Robert Preston, as Prof. Harold Hill, conducted 76 Trombones for the first time in The Music Man Thursday, Dec. 19, 1957.

Broadway welcomed spunky orphan Annie when it debuted on Thursday, April 21, 1977. (Friday, April 22 was her first tomorrow.)

Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats debuted on Broadway at the Winter Garden Theater on Thursday, Oct. 8, 1982, and his musical version of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables opened at Broadway Theater on Thursday, March 12, 1987.

Pavarotti wows Paris

Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti sang Thursday, Sept. 2, 1993, for tens of thousands of mesmerized fans crammed next to Paris' Eiffel tower for one of his favorite rock-star-like outdoor concerts. About 14,000 people paid $17-170 for a seat, but tens of thousands more listened for free and watched him on a giant screen on a balmy evening, some staking out space on the Champ-de-Mars lawn hours before Pavarotti came on stage.

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