FIRST OFF . . .

Cartons of musical manuscripts discovered in a Warner Bros. warehouse in Secaucus, N.J., five years ago have been examined and identified by scholars who said they include lost tunes by George Gershwin and Jerome Kern. “It’s like finding a Stephen Foster song, or a Walt Whitman poem,” said Robert Kimball, who oversaw the inventory. The cache includes about 70 songs by Gershwin--some with lyrics by his brother, Ira--plus works by Richard Rodgers, Victor Herbert, Vincent Youmans, Sigmund Romberg, Rudolf Friml and other luminaries of the American theater. The manuscripts were moved to a vault in Manhattan after their discovery in 1982. Musical theater scholars have been poring over the material since 1985.