Sphere lights up with an advertisement for "The Wizard of Oz at Sphere" ahead of the show's premiere on August 28, 2025 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Ethan Miller/Getty Images Share on Facebook Share on X Share to Flipboard Send an Email Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Print the Article Post a Comment The reveal of the Land of Oz when Dorothy Gale opens the door of her storm-tossed farmhouse, transitioning from sepia to luminous color, is one of the most stunning visual experiences in Hollywood history. The music accompanying that moment is "gorgeous," says composer David Newman: "It's almost like the Alban Berg violin concerto, without the violin. There's so much modernism in that score, as well as throwback and interpolation. It is a really great, great work of art." It's also a work of art that was recorded in 1939, in mono sound, with rather primitive technology. And when Sphere Studios decided to transport The Wizard of Oz into its eye-popping, immersive techno-wonder in Las Vegas, they wanted the music to dazzle audiences' ears as much as the imagery their eyes (and cyclone effects, their butts). Instead of manipulating the ancient recordings with modern wizardry, they invested in the human touch. Related Stories Business Inside Opening Night of 'Wizard of Oz' at the Sphere: "We're Finally Off to See the Wizard" Business James Dolan and David Zaslav Appear as "Two-Second Characters" in the Sphere's 'Wizard of Oz' Sphere tapped Newman - a veteran film composer as well as a conductor of classic film music in concert - to re-record the entire score with a live orchestra, on the same MGM (now Sony) scoring stage where Herbert Stothart conducted his original Oz score in 1939. Musicians were chosen for their ability to play in the unique style of golden age MGM musicals, and the actual ocarina (a small hand flute) heard in "If I Only Had a Brain" was reactivated. Newman says the eight-day recording project, which took place in August 2024, was "one of the highlights, if not the highlight of my career." It was also a time machine to his own ancestry. Newman's father was composer Alfred Newman, one of the architects of Hollywood scoring who ran the music department at 20th Century Fox for decades and scored hundreds of films including, in 1939, Wuthering Heights. Like his father did, Newman would sometimes literally sing phrasings as direction to his Oz orchestra. David Newman intimately knows the style of playing in the days when Oz was made. He knows, for instance, that the Oz score "needs a Broadway feel to the brass - a tighter, more articulated sound, or it just sounds weird." "A symphony orchestra will play that, and it'll be kind of smooth," he says. "But a big band will really punch it. The word my father would always say is 'punchy.' And when it's singing, like if the trumpet is with the melody, it has a little vibrato in it." The songs for Oz were written by Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg. Orchestrations and arrangements were overseen by a small army of artisans, common practice in the old studio system. The actual underscore was composed by Stothart, a Wisconsin native born in 1885 whose talents took him to Broadway, working with George Gershwin and Oscar Hammerstein II, which then catapulted him over the rainbow to Hollywood in 1929 where he scored more than 100 films and earned ten Academy Award nominations. His other titles include Mrs. Miniver and Mutiny on the Bounty, but he will forever be linked to Dorothy's adventures in Oz - the score that won him an Oscar. Three of Stothart's granddaughters attended the premiere of The Wizard of Oz at Sphere on August 28, taking in the restored glory created by a family legend they never got to meet. (Stothart died in 1949.) Stothart's score ingeniously adapts Arlen's iconic song melodies and also references familiar folk tunes and classical pieces like Night on Bald Mountain (a practice that developed out of the silent film era). His mysterious, sparkling theme for Glinda opens the film, but in the form of an imposing anthem. His theme for wicked Miss Gulch is a minor-key riff on "We're off to see the Wizard." Interconnections abound, all orchestrated with a shimmering, timeless magic. The experience inside Sphere's enormous dome - aptly reminiscent of the Wicked Witch's crystal ball and Glinda's floating orb - begins in a visual recreation of Radio City Music Hall, with the sound of unseen musicians tuning up and playing snippets of the Oz score. It's a subtle but clever device, tricking the audience into believing there are live musicians in the pit. And, in a way, there are. For as much digital and A.I. trickery that Sphere employed to explode an antique motion picture onto a cutting-edge screen, every single note heard in this radical rendition of The Wizard of Oz was played by a real human being in Culver City. The makers of the new production talk big about their desire to