My Fair Lady, Frederick Loewe/Alan Jay Lerner 

More than four decades before the emergence of Loewe-Lerner’s musical My Fair Lady, which is still one of the most successful stage works of the 20th century music theatre, an Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw wrote an intriguing play Pygmalion, which was named after legendary Cyprian sculptor who succumbed to an erotic desire for his own artistic creation, and soon became an advocate of women’s independency as well as a sharp critique of the then rigid British class system.

Strong romantic references and somewhat restrained erotic tension between the two protagonists, Eliza and Henry, found its way to music theatre. A rather conventional score by Frederick Loewe to a libretto by Alan Jay Lerner underlined the comic and witty character of Shaw’s original play, omitting its heavy criticism, and transforming it rather into a sit-com on account of Eliza’s climbing up the social ladder. Despite being just a "simple flower girl from Cockney", Eliza is ambitious and wants to become an independent woman.

After a memorable encounter with Professor Higgins, a rather vain and snobbish phonetician, she decides to undertake lessons of fine manners and speech etiquette with Higgins. The first Broadway production in 1956, starring legendary actor Rex Harrison and a versatile singer and actress Julie Andrews, was a huge success. Two years later, a subsequent staging in West End only secured the musical’s undisputable popularity and position within the repertoire.