The shopping season is upon us! With Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, and today, Giving Tuesday-purchasing power seems to be on the brain. With that in mind, we're looking at the cross between consumerism and music this week in a show called "You Better Shop Around."
Did you know...
- Act II of La Bohème by Giacomo Puccini opens in a marketplace in Paris's Latin Quarter, with vendors selling their wares like oranges, dates, and hot chestnuts.
- The musical She Loves Me by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick was based on the 1937 Miklos Laszlo play Parfumerie, about two rival shopkeepers who fall in love, which also the basis for the films The Shop Around The Corner, In The Good Old Summertime, and You've Got Mail.
- Felix Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No. 2 was used in a science experiment in 1993 about background music and its effect on shopping habits in a wine store: classical music made people buy more expensive wine!
- The Symphonie-Passion by organist Marcel Dupré was written for the Wanamaker Organ - the largest fully-functioning organ in the world, located in the Wanamaker (now Macy's) department store in Philadelphia.
See the full playlist for this week's show below:
