Broadway outings.

Six reissued cast albums reveal the roots of musical theater's own coming-out process

Hard to believe in these days of Rent headsets and invisible orchestras, but there was a time when singers in musicals didn't use mikes. They had voices and followed Momma Rose's cardinal admonition in Gypsy: "Sing out, Louise!"

As we celebrate Stonewall 30 this summer, Columbia Records has lovingly spiffed up its own slice of history, reissuing the original cast recordings for six variously entrancing musicals: Cinderella, Flower Drum Song, Gypsy, Sweet Charity, Marne, and No, No, Nanette. Sweetened with previously unreleased songs and interviews, the CDs radiate glorious "human-sounding singing" while also demonstrating the gradual loosening of sexual attitudes in musicals from the late 1950s into the late 1960s.

The earliest of the shows, Cinderella (1957), is the Rodgers and Hammerstein television telling of the classic tale, starring Julie Andrews, fresh from her stage triumph in My Fair Lady (1956). Fair Julie has never sounded more heart-stoppingly lovely. Less beguiling is Rodgers and Hammerstein's Flower Drum Song (1957), a heavy-handed excursion into San Francisco's Chinatown. It's the sort of show that prompts one to consider whether it might benefit from cross-dressing. Done in drag, the relentlessness of "I Enjoy Being a Girl" just might become clever satire as lesbian folksinger Phranc discovered years ago.

In the wake of those buttoned-up shows, what a revelation was Gypsy (1959), considered by many to be the greatest musical of them all. Ethel Merman tore into the capstone role of Momma Rose and rocked Broadway; "Rose's Turn" is still a searing listen, the peak moment in a glorious score by Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim. Their now-classic songs were joined to the tough and tender libretto of out writer Arthur Laurents.

Gypsy's raw, unvarnished view of vaudeville and burlesque significantly expanded what was acceptable in musicals. Indeed, the bold soliciting of johns in "Big Spender" from Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields's Sweet Charity (1966) may sound like good-natured spoofing today, but its in-your-face sexuality simply wouldn't have happened before Gypsy. Along with the endearingly raspy singing of its star Gwen Verdon, Sweet Charity foreshadowed the sexually ambivalent sensuality that director-choreographer Bob Fosse took still further in the film Cabaret (1972) and in Chicago (1975) onstage.

The same year as Sweet Charity, Jerry Herman's Mame made Angela Lansbury into a major musical star. Herman's score's a beaut, and Lansbury's duet with Bea Arthur, "The Man in the Moon," is a witty albeit coded number. It was close to -- but not quite openly -- gay. Herman, of course, was the one who finally threw open the closet door with La Cage Aux Folles (1983) and its gay anthem, "I Am What I Am."

In 1971 No, No, Nanette turned up and reintroduced the general public to art deco, and two years post-Stonewall, gay was the word for its "Peach on the Beach": The previously unreleased Act 2 opening chorus frolics about, musing "what a day to be gay in the ocean." It's just... peachy! But it wasn't until two years later, in 1973, that Tommy Tune had the first openly gay role in a Broadway musical, singing Coleman and Fields's "It's Not Where You Start" in Michael Bennett's Seesaw.

Finely remastered (kudos especially to ace producer Thomas Z. Shepard) and with profusely illustrated booklets, this is a delicious set of reissues. They remind us of past pleasures and underscore that even today -- on or off the stage -- being out is not something to take for granted.

Velez is a New York City-based music writer.

Look for more information about these classic Broadway releases and links to related Internet sites at www.advocate.com