The original cast album of Adam Guettel’s new Broadway musical, Days of Wine and Roses, released digitally on Nonesuch Records earlier this year, will be released on CD on May 17; you can hear the album and pre-order the CD here. Craig Lucas wrote the show’s book and Michael Greif directs the production, which previously ran at the Atlantic Theater Company earlier this year. Kelli O’Hara and Brian d’Arcy James star in this searing musical, based on the 1962 film and original 1958 teleplay of the same name, about a couple falling in love in 1950s New York and struggling against themselves to build their family.

Days of Wine and Roses marks the reunion of Guettel and Lucas, who last collaborated on the six-time Tony Award-winning musical The Light in the Piazza. Following a critically acclaimed, sold-out run at Atlantic Theater Company, the show opened on Broadway on January 28, 2024, at Studio 54; the final performance is this Sunday, March 31.

John McWhorter, writing in the New York Times, said of Days of Wine and Roses, “Repeated listenings compound the amazement. [Guettel’s] work, such as the musicals Floyd Collins and The Light in the Piazza, has always offered that kind of challenge—initially leaving a feeling of: Beautiful, but wait, I need to hear it again —and those up for it have a way of coming away shining like Moses down from the Mount. The new score has the same effect.”

Adam Guettel is a composer/lyricist and teacher living in New York City. He was nominated for the 2019 Tony Award for Best Original Score for To Kill a Mockingbird. Other theater credits include The Light in the Piazza (2005); Tony Awards for Best Original Score and Best Orchestrations; Drama Desk Awards for Outstanding Music and Outstanding Orchestrations; Grammy Award nomination for Best Musical Theater Album; cast album on Nonesuch Records), Floyd Collins (1996 at Playwrights Horizons; Lucille Lortel Award for Best Musical, Obie Award for Best Music; cast album on Nonesuch Records), and Saturn Returns (1998 at The Public Theater; recorded by Nonesuch Records as Myths and Hymns). Other awards include the Stephen Sondheim Award (1990), the ASCAP New Horizons Award (1997), and the American Composers Orchestra Award (2005). He received an honorary doctorate from Lehman College in 2007 and was made an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Music in 2019.

Craig Lucas wrote the plays Blue Window, Change Agent, The Dying Gaul, God’s Heart, I Was Most Alive with You, The Lying Lesson, Missing Persons, Reckless, Prayer for My Enemy, Ode to Joy, Prelude to a Kiss, The Singing Forest, Small Tragedy, Stranger; books for the musicals Amélie, An American in Paris, Days of Wine and Roses, The Light in the Piazza, Marry Me A Little, Three Postcards; screenplays for Blue Window, Longtime Companion, Prelude to a Kiss, Reckless, The Dying Gaul, Secret Lives of Dentists; the opera libretti for Orpheus in Love, Two Boys; and the ballet libretto for Christopher Wheeldon’s Cinderella. He directed world premieres of The Light in the Piazza, I Was Most Alive with You, Ode to Joy, Change Agent & This Thing of Darkness (co-author David Schulner), and Harry Kondoleon’s plays Saved or Destroyed and Play Yourself and the movies The Dying Gaul and Birds of America. He received the Excellence in Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, Drama Desk, Obie, L.A. Drama Critics, Laura Pels/PEN Mid-career, LAMBDA Literary, Hull-Warriner, Sundance Audience, Flora Roberts, Madge Evans-Sidney Kingsley & the Steinberg/ACTA Best Play, and the Hermitage Greenfield Prize among other honors. 

Days of Wine and Roses features direction by Michael Greif, choreography by Sergio Trujillo & Karla Puno Garcia, scenic design by Lizzie Clachan, costume design by Dede Ayite, lighting design by Ben Stanton, sound design by Kai Harada, music direction by Kimberly Grigsby, orchestrations by Adam Guettel and Jamie Lawrence, hair and wigs by David Brian Brown, and casting by The Telsey Office; Craig Burns, CSA. Judy Schoenfeld serves as production stage manager.