12Musical Theatre

© Paul Kolnik

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© 2015 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

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The Connections Between Music and Drama

• Greek tragedy• Opera• Shakespeare• Nineteenth-century

melodrama• Popular entertainment in

the nineteenth century• The musical is predominately

an American form that evolved in the twentieth century

• What is the appeal of music • and dance?

Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera

© 2015 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Types of Musical Theatre• Opera

– Drama set entirely to music• Operetta

– Predominately drama set to music but with some spoken portions (usually a romantic story)

• Musical comedy – Developed in America in the 1920s—light, comic story

interspersed with popular music• Musical

– Evolved from the operetta and musical comedy• Revue

– Comic sketches and vignettes alternated with musical numbers—no single story and stand-alone songs

© Michal Daniel

© 2015 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

1920s and 1930s American Musicals

• Show Boat—the landmark musical of its age– Produced in 1927– Serious story

(romance between a white man and a woman

of mixed-race)– Songs integrated into

the plot– Elimination of the

chorus line– Produced by Joseph Kern

and Oscar Hammerstein II– Lyrics of wit “You’re the Top”, “Anything Goes”

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© Catherine Ashmore

© 2015 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

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1920s and 1930s American Musicals

• Other landmark productions of the time:– 1931: Of Thee I Sing (George and Ira

Gershwin)– 1935: Porgy and Bess (George Gershwin,

DuBose Heyward, and Ira Gershwin)– 1940: Pal Joey (Richard Rodgers and Lorenz

Hart)– Dealing with American themes of race,

presidential elections, the antihero.

© 2015 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Musical Theatre of the 1940s and 1950s

• Oklahoma!– Richard Rodgers and

Oscar Hammerstein II – First collaboration

– Integration of music, dance, and story— Agnes de Mille, choreographer

– Songs integrated with story, violence onstage, ballet.

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© Martha Swope

Guys and Dolls, words and music by Frank Loesser.

© 2015 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Musical Theatre of the 1940s and 1950s

• Other landmark musicals of the period:– Carousel (1945) / South Pacific (1949) – Guys & Dolls (1950) / The King & I (1951) – My Fair Lady (1956) / West Side Story (1957) – The Sound of Music (1959)– Surge in choreography, composers and

lyricists – range and depth.

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Musicals from the 1960s through the 1980s

• End of the golden age – Fiddler on the Roof (1964) – jewish family, pogrom– Hair (1967)—representative of the anti-establishment

culture of young America, fragmented– A Chorus Line (1975)—emphasized the connections

between choreographer, dancers, and the musical• Emergence of the concept musical

– Stephen Sondheim (Follies / Company)– Andrew Lloyd Webber (Cats / Starlight Express)

• The British invasion (1970s-1980s)– Andrew Lloyd Webber and Cameron Macintosh

© 2015 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Musicals from the 1960s through the 1980s

• Sunday in the Park with George– Stephen Sondheim – the “concept musical”

in which the production is built around an idea or a theme rather than a story.

– Follies and Assassins

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© Martha Swope

© 2015 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Musicals from 1990 to the Present

• Four current trends on Broadway:– Revivals from the past – less risk to produce

• Chicago / Annie / Cabaret / Pippin– Contemporary shows

• Rent / Avenue Q / Hamilton / In the Heights– Musicals from films

• Monty Python’s Spamalot / The Producers / Hairspray– Musicals from popular music

• Mamma Mia! / Rock of Ages

• What will the future musical encompass?• Why have musicals remained so popular?

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