Playbill has learned that the White House will host a special performance of American History Unbound's The Eyes of the World: From D-Day to VE Day December 6, marking the eve of the 83rd anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Per a White House official, President Biden will attend the performance and deliver remarks.
Developed by historian John Monsky and under the stage direction of Peter Flynn, the work tells the story of the final months of World War II in Europe, using the words and images of Ernest Hemingway, Lee Miller, Robert Capa, the 761st Tank Battallion, and a young intelligence officer who would become a novelist, all narrated by Monsky. Those texts are interspersed with rare film and photographs sourced from the National Archives along with musical performances of songs from Broadway and beyond, including music by Glenn Miller, Frank Loesser, Edith Piaf, Jerome Kern, Jeffrey Klitz and Robert Cary, John Kander and Fred Ebb, and Michael Kamen. The work has been previously performed at Carnegie Hall in NYC and Massachusetts' Boston Pops, the latter of which aired on PBS last month.
Broadway vocalists will be featured in the musical performances, including Shereen Ahmed (My Fair Lady), Kate Rockwell (Mean Girls), Nicholas Rodriguez (Company), and Daniel Yearwood (Hamilton), all reprising their work from the Boston Pops performance. They'll be accompanied by music director Ian Weinberger.
Monsky's previous historical symphonic works have explored the Vietnam War, the race to the moon, D-Day, and World War I. Most recently, his production November 1918: The Great War & The Great Gatsby played to a sold-out crowd at Carnegie Hall.
The filmed Boston Pops performance is currently available to stream at PBS.org.