A Broadway musical backed by a Bermudian has received the most nominations for this year’s Tony Awards.

Carl Paiva, who ran a travel agency on the island for decades before moving to Manhattan in 2013, said he couldn’t be more delighted with the success of Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812.

The show, a musical adaptation of a section of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, received 12 nominations ahead of the awards ceremony on June 11, more than any other show.

Mr Paiva, an investor in the production, along with business partner TJ Armand, told The Royal Gazette it was gratifying to see the show get the critical acclaim it deserved, and to see their investment paying off. “You start to see the cheques coming in,” he said.

Mr Armand added: “What a relief. It’s by no means a cheap investment. As an investor, you want to support the art, but you want your money back.

“The Tony nominations are a critically acclaimed validation of the fact our first Broadway investment became a successful show. Out of all of those shows that were pitched to Carl and myself, that’s the one we picked.”

He said he and Mr Paiva wanted to support a production that was “artistically valid”, as well as commercially successful. Mr Paiva said: “There’s so much energy and the way the story is told through song is beautiful, funny, touching.”

The pair, who jointly run Armand and Paiva LLC, are developing a musical of their own — Sama: An American Requiem — which they hope to get on Broadway in the not-too-distant future.

Recent concert performances of the show at 54 Below and Joe’s Pub in New York sold out and there will be a table reading on June 5, followed by an industry reading, for potential producers.

“There are so many steps behind the scenes,” said Mr Armand, an award-winning composer, lyricist and librettist, who wrote Sama.

Mr Paiva, the business brains behind Armand and Paiva, said feedback from the industry so far had been excellent. “It’s all good,” he said. “It’s all exciting. Many of the producers that we know have said to us they can’t believe the progress we have made in a very short period of time.

“Sometimes we don’t feel that way, but when we look at other productions that we are aware of, we have moved much faster than them. That has a lot to do with TJ and his talented team.”

Mr Paiva is a director of Bermuda Press Holdings, The Royal Gazette’s parent company.