Henry Krieger, best known as the composer of Side Show and Dreamgirls, and Susan J. Vitucci, recently staged Love's Fowl, a "multi-media puppet opera" at Off-Broadway's New York Theatre Workshop. Krieger did more than simply provide the tunes for his new work; he played piano and helped sing the songs, in Italian and English, with lyricist, mezzo and puppeteer Vitucci.

Now Original Cast Recordings will preserve the spoofy operatic score, when Love's Fowl goes into the recording studio Aug./Sept. for a planned release Oct./Nov., according to OCR's Bruce Yeko (July 14).

The concept of the show is as follows: Vitucci is a scholar on the life of Chicken Little, having discovered "The Secret Diaries of La Pulcina Piccola," a revelatory document scratched into bark, leaves, and paper. According to Vitucci and Krieger, there was much, much more to Chicken Little's story than the disastrous "the sky is falling" incident. Much of Love's Fowl concerns Pulcina's romances, adventures out west and out-foxing of a fox.

For information on the Love's Fowl CD, call Original Cast Records at (888) 627-3993.

-- By Robert Simonson
and David Lefkowitz