and Jerry Orbach making his Broadway debut as Paul Berthalet. Gower Champion both directed and choreographed with orchestrations by Philip J. Lang. The puppets were designed and created by Tom Tichenor. Carnival was notable for its innovative staging: there was no overture, and before the play commenced the curtain was already raised to put on view a field with a few trees; at the play's beginning actors hauled in wagons and raised a tent as if they were setting up a traveling fair at a new site. Throughout the play actors entered and exited the stage via the aisles of the theater, where occasional bits of the action were played. Carnival was an instant hit with critics and audiences: John Chapman of the Daily News declared the play "enchantment from the moment the houselights go down" while in the Mirror Robert Coleman reported how the premiere's audience "blistered their palms in affectionate welcome to the town's new song and dance triumph."<ref>Miletich, Leo. N. Broadway's Prize-Winning Musicals". Haworth Park Press (1993), p.98</ref> Carnival ran on Broadway for 719 performances, moving from the Imperial to the Winter Garden Theatre on December 20, 1962, where it ran until January 5, 1963. In the early stages of developing Carnival, Merrick had envisioned Lili as a dancing rather singing role as in the parent film Lili, and had hoped that film's star Leslie Caron would recreate the Lili role on Broadway. This course proving untenable, the Lili role in Carnival was developed as a singing role for which Carol Lawrence was for a time a front runner. However, Merrick's ultimate choice for the role was Anna Maria Alberghetti, an Italian born lyric soprano who, at twenty-four, had eighteen years experience as a singer and had a light resume of screen acting credits, mostly on television. Before Carnival, Alberghetti had two evident credits as a musical stage actress, having appeared at the Oakdale Theatre in Wallingford CT in productions of Rose-Marie and The Firefly in, respectively, 1959 and 1960. It has been reported that Merrick cast Alberghetti in Carnival after a January 1961 viewing of her cabaret act in Philadelphia, where the singer's audience interaction had made a favorable impression. However, Alberghetti has stated that Merrick had her audition after seeing her at the Oakdale Musical Theater in 1960, and her casting as Lili was reported in The New York Times as early as November 1960.