Directors Note 

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"And what do you do for a living, Mrs. Levi?" asks Ambrose Kemper in the first scene of that most delightful of musical comedies, Hello Dolly! "Some people paint, some people sew...I meddle," replies Dolly. And we are off on a whirlwind race around New York and Younkers at the turn of the century as we take part in the adventures of America's most beloved matchmaker, Mrs. Dolly Gallagher Levi.

Hello, Dolly! is the story of Mrs. Levi's efforts to marry Horace Vandergelder, the well-known half-a-millionaire, and send his money circulating among the people like rainwater the way her late husband, Ephraim Levi, taught her. Along the way she also succeeds in matching up the young and beautiful Widow Molloy with Vandergelder's head clerk, Cornelius Hackl; Cornelius's assistant, Barnaby Tucker, with Mrs. Molloy's assistant, Minnie Fay; the above-mentioned struggling artist, Ambrose Kemper, with Mr. Vandergelder's weeping niece, Ermengarde; and a few members of the audience with each other. Mrs. Levi tracks Vandergelder to his hay and feed store in Younkers, back to Mrs. Molloy's hat shop in New York, out into the street where they are all caught up in the Fourteenth Street Association Parade, and finally into the most elegant and expensive restaurant in town, the Harmonia Gardens. It is here that Dolly is greeted by the waiters, cooks, doormen and wine stewards, in one of the most famous songs in the history of American musical comedy, "Hello, Dolly!"

Hello, Dolly! is the ebullient and irresistible story of the joy of living, glittering with wonderful songs, shining with happy signs, alive with the personality of one of the most fabulous characters on the musical stage...Dolly Gallagher Levi!