By SHARON EBERSON
The whole Madame Clicquot affair began, as such things often do, with music and bubbly. And as so often is the case, there was a Pittsburgh connection.
Mark Fleischer, Pittsburgh CLO’s executive producer, had his head turned by song titles such as Luxury and Barrels and Casks, and so began the journey that lands the world premiere production of Madame Clicquot: A Revolutionary Musical at the Byham Theater, May 29-June 8, 2025.
After a concert version of Madame Clicquot sold out at Arts Center of Coastal Carolina in 2021, the creative team worked with music producers Frank Galgano and Michael Croiter to record six songs with a full cast and orchestra.
“It was such a fun, wonderful experience,” said producer-director Laurie Glodowski. “But the reason I did it was so we would have something to sell and have it made, and that came really fast. Mark Fleischer, who knows Matt [Castle] and Frank from Brainstorm Records, called them and said, ‘What on earth is this thing you’re doing with my favorite Champagne?’ And they said, ‘Oh, I think you might have to talk to Laurie. He didn’t even know I was from Pittsburgh, and I mean, my whole family is from Pittsburgh. And so it feels like bringing it home.”
Created by Richard C. Walter and Lisette Glodowski, the new biomusical about the daring Champagne entrepreneur Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin Clicquot boasts a cast including Pittsburgh performers (such as Joseph Domencic), Broadway veterans (Steve Blanchard) or both (Matthew Hydzik).
Stars who have been with the show from the start are Victoria Frings (An Enemy of the People on Broadway) as Madame Clicquot, Nick Laughlin as Napoleon Bonaparte and the TV Prince to Brandy’s Cinderella, Paolo Montalban, as Louis Bohne.
The show tells the story of the determined woman who innovated the process of making Champagne during the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, resulting in the Veuve Clicquot luxury brand that thrives today.
Her story captivated composer and lyricist Walter, whose family celebrations always included a bottle of the Champagne with the renowned yellow label. Walter recruited Lisette Glodowski – Laurie’s daughter – as his book and songwriting partner when they were both working on their MFAs at the NYU Tisch School.
That’s when Pittsburgh first came into the Madame Clicquot picture.
The Glodowskis’ family tree has deep roots in Pittsburgh, including as the founders of what is now Point Park University, and the birth of Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre.
“Mark didn’t even know I grew up in Pittsburgh when he called,” said Laurie Glodowski, whose grandparents, Dorothy and L. Herbert Finkelhor, in 1933 founded the Business Training College that became Point Park College. Their son and Laurie’s father, Arthur Blum, was the youngest college president in the nation when he was appointed at 34 to head what has become Point Park University, from 1967-1973. His leadership included acquiring the Pittsburgh Playhouse in Oakland, establishing performing arts programs at the school, and helping to found PBT,, with Nicholas Petrov and Loti Falk.
Laurie married Dr. Justin Glodowski, who Pittsburghers may recall as a former PBT dancer and who was in the ensemble of five CLO shows in the mid-1970s.
Today, they make North Carolina their home, but Laurie remains a Pittsburgher at heart.
When her late father received an honorary degree from Point Park University, family members were given a walk-through of the new Downtown Pittsburgh Playhouse that opened in 2018.
“My father had stood on that corner 50 years ago and said, ‘The theater needs to be right here.’ He envisioned the street-level windows so people could look into the process. That was all my dad,” Laurie Glodowski said.
She also recalled days as a child, “running around Heinz Hall and all of its grandeur,” which is how she first encountered Janet Campbell, the PBT costume designer for 48 years who, in a full-circle collaboration, is designing the costumes for Madame Clicquot – her first musical-theater show.
In a Zoom call with writing partners Richard and Lisette, producer Laurie and costumier Janet, the conversation ping-ponged through time, from the makings of a great Champagne house in the 18th and 19th centuries, to the seven years from first note to the 2025 opening of the first production of Madame Clicquot: A Revolutionary Musical.
Richard C. Walter and Lisette Glodowski
THE SPARK OF CREATION
Composer-lyricist-librettist Walter had developed a taste for history when he decided to look into the Champagne favored by his family, “and the more that I read about [Madame Clicquot] and what happened, I was like, how is this not the biggest story we’re told?”
Teaming with Lisette, he realized he had found “the right person to write this with” the first time they sat at a piano.
“I still remember the day really clearly,” Lisette Glodowski said. “He pulled me aside, we were by a piano, and he said, ‘Hey, I know what we should write next. Do you like the French Revolution?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Do you like champagne?’ ‘Yes.’ And, ‘Do you like strong female leads?’ I said, ‘What is this? Let’s start writing it!’ And that’s how it started.”
They realized they were in sync when they agreed immediately that they should write the first song about a key moment in the story.
“It’s the song that has been unchanged but for a couple of tweaks. Everything else has evolved over the last seven years … but this has really been the core of the show, and it was the love song,” Walter said.
WHO WAS MADAME CLICQUOT?
The life of Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin Clicquot may be the greatest story you’ve never heard of, although there have been previous attempts to bring her story to light.
She inspired a 2023 movie, Widow Clicquot — the “veuve” of the Veuve Clicquot Champagne house is the French word for “widow,” and her story is told in the biography “The Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It,” by Tilar J. Mazzeo.
The writers of Madame Clicquot for the stage have aimed for historical accuracy as much as possible.
In the musical, a young Barbe-Nicole has ambitions to run her father’s textile business, but he instead has arranged for her to marry François Clicquot, the son of his business rival. “Much to everyone’s surprise, Barbe-Nicole and François fall madly in love. With his passion for wine and her business savvy, they defy their fathers’ wishes and run Clicquot Wines as a team.”
Salesman Louis Bohne is hired to help expand the business to an international market, The show description concludes, “Just as they start to make progress, François’s health takes a turn, which tragically leads to his death. Utterly heartbroken, Barbe-Nicole, [widowed at 27], makes the shocking decision to follow her instincts, save Clicquot Wines from liquidation and run the company alone.”
The abiuding process of making the highest quality Champagne is due in part to Madame Clicquot’s innovative riddling table, an efficient way to clear the wine by concentrating the sediment in the neck of the bottle, and making it easier to remove.
According to the Veuve Champagne website, “Her creativity and lust for innovation led to many firsts in Champagne: the first known vintage champagne; the invention of the riddling table; the first known blended rosé champagne. Three inventions that revolutionised champagne making and were widely adopted by producers, becoming the basis of modern champagne production.”
The musical covers Madame Clicquot’s life up to age 39, although she lived to near 90, dying in 1866.
FIRST STEPS TOWARD PITTSBURGH
The initial readings of the musical, in New York, were in 2020, with a pandemic shutdown looming, and a lot of time to work on their project.
“We talk about it all the time – that first reading, it was like a different show,” Walter said. “We look back at it, and we’re like, ‘How did anybody see the promise in this show?’ Then we think about where we are now, we’re so excited about what we’ve done and how we’ve honed it.”
Walter said the musical’s progression from reading to concert to recording to the Pittsburgh CLO was a testament to the tenacity of Laurie Glodowski.
“In all of the muddiness that comes along with just uncovering an idea and trying to hone it, I think having somebody who will champion you along the way and say, ‘I see what you’ve got. I see what you’re working with. Let’s develop it. Let’s get feedback …’ We’re very lucky. I think a lot of writing teams, when they’re starting out, maybe don’t have that kind of direction and someone on that side of the table that believes in you so much. So that’s been really great.”
DRESSING FOR MUSICAL THEATER VS. BALLET
Janet Campbell is used to dressing ballet dancers for specific freedom of movement. Depending on the choreography for musical theater, the same holds true.
With Madam Clicquot, her first venture into musical theater, there is the fashion of the period – for women, not a lot of volume, but high-waisted, long and flowy.
“I did a dive into the history, and I found that a lot of the lines remain pretty much the same as the Regency period,” said Campbell. “When you’re doing period designs for a musical or ballet, you can tweak it so that it works for you and for the people in it. The lines for Regency Girls are very straight. I want them to be much fuller, so I’ve sort of adapted that line.”
She made a tweak in the bodice, she said, “just to make the ladies look better.”
Personalities figure into the clothing as well. For example, Barbe-Nicole, as a working woman – “a nice, wonderful straw hat person” – isn’t as concerned with clothing as another character in the show, her sister, who has an eye for extravagance.
“She wears accessories, and she’s the one who will put all the lace and the trim and the roses and flowers on in the hats.”
There is one big change from costume design for musical theater that is not applicable to ballet.
“I am hoping to enhance a lot of the dance portions of the show,” Campbell said. “But I do have to deal with microphones, which I never had to deal with in ballet.”
Another challenge is having to fit actors who are “not right down the hall,” as they are when she is working with PBT. She traveled to Raleigh to do fittings with Frings, but mostly, Campbell is working with measurements as opening night approaches and the excitement builds toward something new and something nostalgic, having worked with Justin Glodowski back in the 1970s.
“I’ve known the family for a long time, so it’s wonderful in that respect, because they’ve got such a beautiful production coming up,” Campbell said. “But it’s also fun listening to Richie talking about seeing it for the first time, because you have a clean slate, and that first rehearsal is just incredible.”
BRINGING ‘MADAME CLICQUOT’ HOME
“It feels purposeful,” Laurie Glodowski said of landing the show’s first full production in Pittsburgh.
There had been other possibilities, she said, but she trusts that her hometown is a welcoming one for in-development works. She expects that everyone from “Richard and Lisette, to Janet, to video designer Mark Ciglar … will feel the warmth, and then be able to move forward.”
“We’ve sort of imagined it, but now we’re here,” Walter said, marveling at how far they’ve come from that first day at the piano, to now sitting in on production meetings, where the set and lighting and projection and orchestrations are being fine-tuned.
“In a way, it’s sort of become larger than us now,” he added. “It used to be something we dreamed about. And now we sit in a meeting where we hear 20 people dreaming about it in their own way. And that is, to me, kind of what theater is … the hope is that you make something that people want to put their creative effort into, and they see a part of themselves through their creative work coming through in that production.”
Laurie Glodowski sees the Madame Clicquot world premiere as, in a way, honoring her family’s contributions to Pittsburgh. The story may be about someone who lived a long time ago, in the Champagne region of France, but it’s also about a hard-working woman who defied the odds of running a business not only during wartime, but when it was unheard of for a female to do so.
“You choose places to take your development where it will be loved. You choose carefully and with great effort to find the people that you can connect with, that will connect with the show, and this show is historically accurate, it’s beautiful, it charms people. And I think, truly, that Pittsburgh has some of the nicest theatergoers anywhere, and I feel kinship with them already, right out of the gate.”
TICKETS AND DETAILS
Pittsburgh CLO’s stand-alone engagement of Madame Clicquot at the Byham Theater, May 28-June 8, 2025, is made possible through enhancement funding by commercial producer 42nd Parallel Productions. Tickets: https://pittsburghclo.culturaldistrict.org/production/100289
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