Musical Theatre

1. Musical Theatre What came before musical theatre? How did musical theatre start? What happened next?

2. What came before Musical Theatre? • European beginnings include: • Grand Opera (began in Italy around 1600): story and character conveyed strictly through music and singing. Full orchestra, lush costumes and settings, intense emotional and dramatic content. • Opera flourished throughout the centuries in many languages, Italian (Puccini, Rossini, Verdi), German (Gluck, Mozart, Wagner) and French (Lully, Bizet). • Non-Western theatrical musical tradition flourished alongside European Grand Opera in the Chinese form of Beijing (Peking) Opera, where native instruments and sounds are used along with traditional stories, characters and emotional content.

3. What came before musical theatre? • Ballad Opera is considered the earliest “official” form of musical theatre. Ballad Opera used popular songs of the day in a framework of political satire and lighthearted treatment of the Grand Opera form. The first Ballad Opera is The Beggar’s Opera by John Gay, first performed in London in 1728.

4. What came before Musical Theatre? • Operetta/Comic Opera emerged in 19th-century England with the works of Gilbert and Sullivan (Pirates of Penzance, The Mikado). These works, along with Ballad Opera, helped to establish a new form of theatre, musical comedy.

5. What came before Musical Theatre? • Composers’ works that placed emphasis on lyrical meaning also helped musical theatre to develop. • Important composers during the 19th and early 20th centuries include Sigmund Romberg, Victor Herbert, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin and George M. Cohan. The last three are noted as having written many musicals and, in the case of Cohan and Berlin, famous American patriotic songs still sung today (Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America”).

6. How did Musical Theatre start? • American beginnings: • Vaudeville, Minstrel Plays and Revues all ushered in the Broadway musical in New York City. • Vaudeville shows were often performed by established troupes, including comedy sketches, variety acts (jugglers, acrobats, animal acts, etc.), songs and dances. These were performed for a lower to middle-class audience and often included content directed toward the ethnic variety of the early 20th-century immigrant audience in New York. • Minstrel Shows were performed often by white performers in blackface (later, by black performers). Minstrel Shows were similar to Vaudeville, following the same sort of structure, but included scenes and sketches making fun of black stereotypes.

7. How did Musical Theatre start? • Revues were sets of songs without any storyline tying them together. • Some of the most famous revues included the Ziegfeld Follies, created and produced by Florenz Ziegfeld, famous for extravagant costumes, sets, music and always, many beautiful young women in huge hats. Other revues of note are the George White Scandals. Each of these revues would be titled by year (Ex: George White’s Scandals of 1925).

8. What happened next? • Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern broke ground with the first Broadway musical play, Show Boat, in 1927. • Show Boat is the first example of what are now referred to as book musicals. A book musical is defined as a musical in which there are characters, dialogue and songs that all contribute to a unified story. Show Boat was also the first musical to approach discussion of serious themes such as racism and prejudice. • Prior forms, such as vaudeville and revues, did not include a story tying all the elements of the production together and did not directly present serious themes to the audience in a storytelling format.

9. What happened next? • Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, II solidified the musical play form in Oklahoma! (1943). This was the first musical to integrate dance along with the songs, dialogue and characters, each an important element to tell the story. Songs in musicals serve different purposes; some of the main uses of songs in musicals are: plot or character development, exposition (giving details of the time period, setting and information the audience needs to understand the plot) or entertainment. • Since Show Boat and Oklahoma!, the Broadway musical has not stopped developing, changing and inviting its audience to discover something new: Golden Age: 1943-1962 – Rodgers and Hammerstein: Carousel (1945), Brigadoon (1947), The Sound of Music (1959) Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe: My Fair Lady (1956), Camelot (1960)

10. What happened next? Silver Age: 1964-1980 -- Stephen Sondheim: A Little Night Music (1973), Pacific Overtures (1976) John Kander and Fred Ebb: Chicago (1975) Modern Age:1981-2009 -- Andrew Lloyd Webber: Cats (1982), The Phantom of the Opera (1988) Claude-Michel Schonberg and Alain Boublil: Les Miserables (1987), Miss Saigon (1991), The Pirate Queen (2006)

11. What happened next? Jonathan Larson: Rent (1996) The Disney Musicals: Beauty and the Beast (1994), The Lion King (1997), Tarzan (2006), The Little Mermaid (2008) The Movie Musicals: Young Frankenstein (2007),Legally Blonde (2007), Shrek (2008) The Courageous Originals: Title of Show (2008), In the Heights (2008)

12. Find out more! Check out these websites: • www.playbill.com(the latest Broadway news: openings, closings, etc.) • www.ibdb.com(The InternetBroadway Database: future, current and past shows, cast, composer, theatre and playwright information)

13. What should be the next big Broadway hit? • Meet with 3-4 other students and brainstorm to find out what other movies/stories/themes could be become successful Broadway musicals. • Spend a few minutes deciding as a group on three new musical titles and the inspirations for them.