BROADWAY SHOWS KEEP ITALIAN TOES TAPPING.

Italy has got chills! They're multiplying, and the public's losing control. It's truly a case of musical fever. Italy has its own tradition of musical comedy, led by the songwriting team of Pietro Garinei and Sandro Giovannini. But in the last few years, Italian versions of America's greatest Broadway hits have taken over Italy's stages.

Director Saverio Marconi was the first to bet that American musicals would appeal to Italian audiences. In 1990 his Compagnia della Rancia produced the first Italian version of A Chorus Line, cleverly translated by Michele Renzullo and staged by original cast member Baayork Lee. It was an immediate hit. The success led the company to produce other shows and sent Marconi on a search for well-trained performers.

In the early 1990s, young artists poured into the little town of Tolentino (where Compagnia della Rancia is based) to audition. Most were from television casts, but some came from ballet or singing schools. Maria Laura Baccarini, formerly an acrobatic dancer, performed the part of Sally Bowles in the company's production of Cabaret; Raffaele Paganini, the classic etoile, revealed an extraordinary eclecticism in the productions of Singing in the Rain and in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Fabrizio Angelini, a Italian ballet dancer converted to showbiz, choreographed.

Recently, Compagnia della Rancia has produced Grease, Hello Dolly, An American in Paris and Some Like It Hot with Italian film stars Alessandro Gassman and Gianmarco Tognazzi as Daphne and Josephine. But other theater groups are now getting in on the act. The Sicilian Compagnia del Teatro delle Munizioni stages musicals in English. This season they produced Jesus Christ Superstar with Carl Anderson as Judas--the role he played on Broadway and in the film. Even Luciano Pavarotti's fiancee, Nicoletta Mantovani, has been bitten by the Broadway bug. Last year she produced the Italian version of Rent, and she has plans to buy the rights for Chicago.

Marconi's vision seems to have inspired an epidemic. But the director is already moving on: "I decided I'd like not only to take from American repertoire, but to create an all-Italian show, with everything made by ourselves," he says. It seems he's done just that with his latest production Dance!, a show about a group of female jazz dancers and a band of ballet men that's based on Much Ado About Nothing. The stars are Chiara Noschese and Paganini and the choreography is by Italy's new maestro of dance, Aterballetto's artistic director Mauro Bigonzetti.