The initial staged reading was performed at the Composer/Librettist Conference at The Eugene O'Neill Memorial Theatre Center.
The original version of the show, with a book by Mario Fratti, won the first Richard Rodgers Award. The award was established with the help of an endowment of $1,000,000, donated by Rodgers to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which administers the award. In January 1981, it was announced that a production of this original version of Nine would be produced by La Mama in the fall of 1981, with Tommy Tune directing. As part of the award, La Mama would receive $50,000 to be applied to the financing of the production. But on May 22, 1981, it was reported in the New York Times that the production would not be happening, and that La Mama would return the $30,000 it had already received from the Academy.
Eventually, it was revealed that the problem was related to unhappiness with Fratti's book. Arthur Kopit was hired to write a new book, with Fratti receiving a most unusual program credit when the revised version of the show opened on Broadway in May 1982: "Adapted from the Italian by Mario Fratti." (The musical is based on Federico Fellini's film 8 1/2.)
This may be why on the American Academy page that lists winners of the Rodgers Award, Nine is listed as the first winner, but the page also includes the note that it was "not produced."
