Kismet (musical) London's West End and has been given several revivals. A 1955 film version was produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The musical was commissioned by Edwin Lester, founder and director of the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera, who conceived of a musical based on the 1911 play "Kismet" by Edward Knoblock. Lester had previously produced "Song of Norway", with the same composing team, adapting the melodies of Edvard Grieg. For "Kismet", the writers seized upon the melodies of Alexander Borodin, which they felt had a suitable exotic flavor and lush melodies. "Kismet" is set in a fictional Baghdad in the times of "The
Anya (musical) Mandelbaum, published by St. Martin's Press (1991), pages 235-36 () Anya (musical) Anya is a musical with a book by George Abbott and Guy Bolton and music and lyrics by Robert Wright and George Forrest. As they had done with "Song of Norway (1944)" and "Kismet (1953)", Wright and Forrest developed the musical score using themes written by a classical composer, in this case Sergei Rachmaninoff. Based on Bolton's 1954 English adaptation of Marcelle Maurette's play "Anastasia" and the subsequent 1956 film adaptation of the same name, it focuses on Anya who, when discovered in a Berlin psychiatric facility in