As New York culture elite resumes go, you’d be hard pressed to do better than this: Adam Guettel is a third-generation musical theater composer (his grandfather is Richard Rodgers, and his mother is Mary Rodgers). As a boy soprano, he appeared in 32 performances at the Met, including six as Yniold in Pelléas et Mélisande. Guettel, who also writes lyrics and occasionally performs as a singer and instrumentalist, is alum of Phillips Exeter and Yale.

But I hasten to add—if the legacy is blue-chip, Guettel’s own achievements are still more so. Probably his best-known work is The Light in the Piazza, for which he wrote both music and lyrics, and to my mind it’s one of the two greatest musical theater scores of the last 25 years (the other is Grey Gardens). Something close to an operetta or chamber opera, LITP is a magically sensual, tuneful extravaganza…

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