NR: Now, you also did the vocal arrangements. So, something like the choir at the end of the old "You Are My Home" - that was you?

RM: Yes. If there is more than one singer singing at a time, a vocal arranger gets involved. It can be as simple as how Percy and Marguerite harmonize together in "You Are My Home" wedding or as complicated as the music under the boat at the end, or when they go off to die.

NR: What type of training is necessary for pit musicians?

RM: You have to be a monster on your instrument, or instruments. I don't know how many people know this but... I remember in high school band if somebody played clarinet, that's what they played. You can't get hired for Broadway as a clarinetist, because normally a reed chair might have piccolo, flute, clarinet, soprano sax, alto sax, and contra bass clarinet on one chair. That means you have all those instruments, you play them well, you OWN them, because you have to bring them to the pit. It's just based on the fact that you try to get as many colors as you can into the score and you're limited on the number of people you can hire with the salaries. So, fairly early on in Broadway history, reed players started saying, "Yeah, I play the flute, but I also play the clarinet." So, it expanded and expanded and expanded. I remember when I did Woman of the Year, a Kander and Ebb show in the late 70's I think, the third trombone had to double on balalaika, and not only did we find a trombonist who played balalaika, but we had two subs! (laughing) So, it's a great town to do this in.

NR: There are a lot of people who are musicians and who are very interested in this, and they want to see how they can get into a pit.

RM: Absolutely the best way in is through subbing. Where you'll see the actors really have to be sick if they're going to miss a show, and there's a system of understudies and standbys to cover that, the deal that the League of Theater Owners and Producers has made with the union is called the "50% Rule." You can keep your job if you play half your shows. You don't get paid, obviously, for the ones you miss, your substitute does. But if you're a violin player who also has symphony commitments, or solo commitments, you can have a Broadway show as the basis of paying your rent and miss when you need to in order to keep the rest of your career going. It's kind of a good deal, it's kind of a bad deal. It's good because it attracts better quality musicians to pit jobs, because people know that they're not trapped in there eight shows a week. It's bad because sometimes I can walk in on a Sunday and be facing three regulars and 20 subs. Some subs are as good as the regular players, some are first-timers. Another issue that conductors often have with this deal that the League made with the rank and file is that there's no consideration of rehearsal. If I have a new drummer - a drum might be the backbone of the pit orchestra. Think of somebody kicking off the tempo in "Into the Fire," they've got to be pretty sure about where that's going. I don't get a chance to work with that drummer until the actors are on stage and the audience is in the house. And we all just sort of cross our fingers and hope that they've learned it well, and that I'm conducting it clearly, and that we all get to the end at the same time.

NR: In the CD booklet, Nan Knighton said that you did the vocal arrangements for "Believe" in one night. Is that normal, or was that unusual?

RM: Pimpernel is very unusual. What happened was the first incarnation of Pimpernel, other than just on the page and the concept album, when we first started thinking of it as a possible Broadway show, we put together a small cast of people and we gave ourselves a week or two to put it up. Rehearsals started 10:00 am on a Monday. Sunday night at 7:00 the cast gathered. I took people through their ranges so I understood who was in the cast, and I pulled an all-nighter. The fun part for Pimpernel is that about 80% of that work survived either intact or is the basis for a slightly more expanded arrangement. So, yeah, a lot of the bigger choral stuff and a lot of the idea of putting a little bit of the "Marseillaise" at the end of "Into the Fire," Marguerite's "Piaf-like" descant in "Storybook" came out of that one night's sweat.

NR: Has there been a time when something happened on stage that was so funny that it interfered with your conducting?

RM: Something happened on stage the other night that was very funny. No, I've got to say that I'm enough of a craftsman at what I do that I've never let it interfere, but I was in tears. The other night, during the library scene, Russell (Garrett) got an enormous response to "Well, I think it's rather nice for a change, quite summery." And Douglas had to wait for the laugh to die down. By the time he was done waiting, there was this twinkle in his eye that I know always means an ad lib from Douglas, and instead of saying, "Sometimes you frighten me" he said, "Does he frighten any of the rest of you?" and four hands went up. Just absolutely off the cuff and I thought it was one of the funniest things I had ever seen.

NR: On "Broadway Beat," Douglas talked about the fact that the new version is so structurally tight that he has to get something in by a certain measure, or he's in trouble. I was there recently and he had a problem with a prop during the "Rescue." Do you have any ability to help him out with that - to slow it down or add a little music?

RM: There are times I do and there are times I don't. Often a show is written with a certain number of what we call vamps or safeties. You play along and then you get to a bar, or a two bar phrase that you can repeat. An example of that is where Dewhurst is speaking about Marie and Armand in Paris and I'm holding until Percy says "nincompoops" and then we go. If you ever see me raise my arm and cue stage, I'm cuing out of a vamp. "Ah yes, bring on that moment of truth" - my arm goes up - "In the mist...." That's because we've been holding a bar until we're done with that speech. Bobby Longbottom's style, and I have to acknowledge, it's very much mine too, (I was thrilled to see this kind of work be done,) is that although the show wants to have spontaneity, and although it wants to have the life of real actors having real moments, it's also on a motor. You get on at the beginning of Act 1 and you are taken for this ride until intermission. So I love the fact that the scene between Percy and Dewhurst happens while Marguerite is dancing and they're locked into a certain number of counts and the music at certain points changes color. Right when he says, "The Marquis de St. Cyr is dead" you hear that tympani beat that you also heard when Marguerite handed Chauvelin the letter in the backstage scene. It's probably less fun for Douglas, it's probably way more fun for me because there is a motor so there's a feeling of a great big dance going on from 8 o'clock until 9:25.

NR: Do technological advancements change the way you interact with the cast? For example, and this is an ancient example, but how about monitors? In the old days, they looked at you, you looked at them. Now, they probably can't even see you at times.

RM: I like the fact that there are little pictures of me all over the place. So that if an actor is facing stage right they can just catch a glimpse of a TV set on the rail instead of having to somehow contort their head to watch me at the same time that they're supposed to be talking to somebody who's 180 degrees away from there. Off stage singing can happen. There are little TV sets around the place. It's a help.

NR: Do the regulars still need to watch you?

RM: I encourage watching. I also think in live theater it's not the goal to make it come out the exact number of milliseconds it was last night. I gauge how the show is going, what mood the actors are in, how the response of the audience is. I might choose to take a slightly faster or slower tempo because I think that's what's going to land tonight based on what I've heard so far. I don't want anybody to just sort of blindly walk through what they did last night. I may want to take them on a slightly different ride.

Interview conducted and photographs by Nancy Rosati.