Lore Noto (producer)

Lore Noto (producer)

Lore Noto (June 9, 1923 – July 8, 2002) was best known as the producer of the off-Broadway musical The Fantasticks. The show by author Tom Jones and composer Harvey Schmidt, opened to mixed reviews on May 3, 1960 at the Sullivan Street Playhouse, but the indefatigable Noto kept it running until its audience discovered it, and made it the longest-running show in U. S. theatre history. By the time the final curtain was brought down on the production on January 13, 2002, the show had played 17,162 performances, earning it the title the "World's Longest Running Musical" in the Guinness Book of Records.

The show won numerous other honors, including an off-Broadway Obie Award, and a special Tony Award in 1992.

After seeing a 1959 Barnard production of a one-act version of a work by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt, Mr. Noto commissioned the authors to expand the musical into a two-act evening of theatre. He later told the "New York Post" that he instantly fell in love with "the lyricism and poetry in its writing".

The Fantasticks — inspired by a play by Edmond Rostand — would go on to become an international sensation, and play at the tiny living-room-sized Sullivan Street Playhouse 1960-2002, playing 17,162 performances. It closed Jan. 13, 2002, and enjoyed several cast albums, countless international stagings, an expanded and revised national tour starring Robert Goulet, and a film version starring Joey McIntyre and Joel Grey (now on DVD).