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Broadway Musicals

Broadway Musicals. What is a musical and how is one created, produced and performed?. What is a Musical?.

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Broadway Musicals

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  1. Broadway Musicals What is a musical and how is one created, produced and performed?

  2. What is a Musical? • Musical (noun):a stage, television or film production utilizing popular-style songs - dialogue optional - to either tell a story (book musicals) or showcase the talents of the writers and/or performers (revues). • Book musicals have gone by many names: comic operas, operettas, opera bouffe, burlesque, burletta, extravaganza, musical comedy, etc.

  3. What is a Musical? • Revues have their roots in variety, vaudeville, music halls and minstrel shows. • The best musicals have three essential qualities – • Brains – intelligence and style • Heart– genuine and believable emotion • Courage– the guts to do something creative and exciting.

  4. How Long Has This Been Going On? • We know that the ancient Greeks included music and dance in their stage comedies and tragedies as early as the 5th Century B.C. • The Romans copied and expanded the forms and traditions of Greek theatre. • Although performed in enclosed wooden structures far smaller than Greek theatres, Roman stagecraft stressed spectacle and special effects, a trend that echoes into our own time.

  5. How Long Has This Been Going On? • If the Roman theatre contributed little to the Greek literature that today's dramatic theatre rests on, musical comedy inherited spectacle and numerous technical achievements from this austere, mechanical, and jaded society.- Denny Martin Flynn, Musical: A Grand Tour (New York: Schirmer Books, 1997), p. 22.

  6. How Long Has This Been Going On? • In the Middle Ages, there was also a tradition of religious dramas. Intended as liturgical teaching tools set to church chants, these plays developed into an autonomous form of musical theatre. • The process was occasionally carried to such extremes that almost the entire text was cast in poetic forms, with little or no dependence on liturgical texts and melodies. The result of this process is nowhere more evident than in The Play of Daniel, perhaps the best known because the most widely performed of medieval dramas. Except for two concluding items – one stanza of a hymn and the Te Deum – the texts and melodies of this play are entirely nonliturgical.- Rochard H. Hoppin, Medieval Music (New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 1978), pp. 180-181.

  7. How Long Has This Been Going On? • This reached its apex during the Renaissance in the commedia dell'arte, an Italian tradition where raucous clown characters improvised their way through familiar stories. • By the Baroque, two forms of musical theater were common in Britain, France and Germany – ballad operas like John Gay's The Beggars Opera (1728) that borrowed popular songs of the day and rewrote the lyrics, and comic operas, with original scores and mostly romantic plot lines, like Michael Balfe's The Bohemian Girl (1845).  

  8. Are Musicals Descended From Opera? • Opera has been with us since the late 1500s, but contemporary musical theatre and film are not direct descendants of grand opera. • However, opera can be called a descendant of classical theatre. When Renaissance writers and composers tried to resurrect the forms of Greek drama, they added music. This eventually led to the birth of grand opera. • From its birth in the 1800s, the musical has often spoofed opera, but it traces its main lineage to other sources. Vaudeville, burlesque, and many other forms are the true ancestors of the modern musical -- not opera.

  9. The American Stage Musical • The first musical production in the Colonies was Flora, a performance that took place in a court room in Charleston, South Carolina, on February 8, 1735. • The English ballad opera remained popular in the Colonies for several decades. After the Colonies had become a nation, a new kind of stage production began to attract interest: the burlesque. (any broadly comic or satirical imitation, as of a writing, play, etc…)

  10. The American Stage Musical • At that time, burlesque consisted of travesties (a crude, distorted, or ridiculous representation) on or parodies (literary or musical composition imitating the characteristic style of some other work; treating a serious subject in a nonsensical manner, as a ridicule) of famous plays, performers or dancers--in song, dance, pantomime (action or gestures without words as a means of expression)and dialogue.

  11. The American Stage Musical • Burlesques were also for the most part foreign importations; and so were the extravaganzas and spectacles that crowded the New York stage just before and immediately after the Civil War. • The accent on female physical beauty (usually in flimsy attire), so important an element in later American musical productions, dates from one of these foreign importations: Ixion, in 1869, in which Lydia Thompson and her English blondes shocked New York by having girls appear in skin-colored tights.

  12. The American Stage Musical • After the middle 1860s, and for the rest of that century, the American stage was literally flooded with foreign operettas: • the opera-bouffes of Offenbach and Lecocq among others; • the operettas of Suppé and Johan Strauss II; • the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan.

  13. The American Stage Musical • The American musical comedy, however, did not emerge with its familiar aspects until after the turn of the twentieth century. • Its parent was George M. Cohan --librettist, lyricist, composer. • Any plot, however far-fetched and improbable, was serviceable just so long as it could be the frame for songs, dances, routines and humorous episodes. • “The play was not the thing, but the elements within the play.” • And for many years American musical comedy was governed by this principle.

  14. The American Stage Musical • Rodgers and Hart lifted musical comedy out of the nursery and carried it to adult maturity b y using themes of dream psychology, American history, American literature. (topics considered taboo up to that time)

  15. Richard Rodgers & Oscar Hammerstein II • The greatest revolution in the American musical theatre up to that time came in 1927 with Show Boat, by Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern. Here we come to a completely new genre--the musical play as distinguished from musical comedy. • Now, at long last, the play was the thing, and everything else was subservient to that play. • Now, at last, came complete integration of song, humor and production numbers into a single and inextricable artistic entity. Here, finally, was a musical with a consistent and credible story line, authentic atmosphere and three-dimensional characters.

  16. Richard Rodgers & Oscar Hammerstein II • The first of the Rodgers and Hammerstein masterworks, Oklahoma!, with which the musical play finally became a significant American art form. • After Oklahoma!, Rodgers and Hammerstein were the most important contributors to the musical-play form--with such masterworks as Carousel, The King and I and South Pacific. The examples they set in creating vital plays, often rich with social thought, provided the necessary encouragement for other gifted writers to create musical plays of their own, men like Lerner and Loewe, Frank Loesser and Leonard Bernstein among others.

  17. The Shows 1927-present

  18. Show Boat • Description: A musical in two acts; It is a musical treasure that beautifully paints a portrait of the ugliness of racism, marital discord and abandonment. And it is a story of love proclaimed in songs that have become standards in American musical literature SHOW BOAT covers one of the most dramatic eras in American history and spans four decades to tell its panoramic, romantic story of the Cotton Blossom floating theater, the Hawks family and their show boat troupe of actors. • Setting: Natchez, on the Mississippi River, on the Cotton Blossom, and Chicago. 1887-1927. • Book & Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II; • Music by Jerome Kern. • Original Production: Dec. 27, 1927-May 4, 1929 • Show has had 6 revivals: 1932, 1946-47, 1948, 1954, 1983, 1994-97.

  19. Oklahoma! • Setting: Indian territory (now Oklahoma) just after the turn of the century, tells of fun, love and romance in the lives of the families living in the Oklahoma territory at the turn of the century. • Book & Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II; • Music by Richard Rodgers. • Based on: Green Grow the Lilacs. • Original Production: May 31, 1943 – May 28, 1948 • Show has had 4 revivals: 1951, 1953, 1979 – 80, 2002 - 03

  20. Carousel • Setting: New England. 1873 - 1888. Billy Bigelow, a smooth-talking carny barker falls in love with a millworker, Julie Jordan. Right before the birth of his daughter, Billy is killed while committing a robbery. Now in heaven, years later, he returns to earth for one day to attend his daughter’s graduation and teach her one very important lesson. • Book & Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II; • Music by Richard Rodgers. • Based on: Liliom. • Original Production: Apr 19, 1945 - May 24, 1947 • Show has had 4 revivals: 1949, 1954, 1957, 1994 - 95

  21. The King and I • Setting: On the docks and in and around the Royal Palace in Bangkok. It is 1862 in Siam when an English widow, Anna Leonowens, and her young son arrive at the Royal Palace in Bangkok, having been summoned by the king to serve as tutor to his many children and wives. The king is largely considered to be a barbarian by those in the West and he seeks Anna's assistance in changing his image, if not his ways. With both keeping a firm grip on their respective traditions and values, Anna and the king grow to understand and, eventually, respect one another, in a truly unique love story. • Book & Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II; • Music by Richard Rodgers. • Original Production: Mar 29, 1951 - Mar 20, 1954 • Show has had 3 revivals: 1977 - 78, 1985, 1996 – 98.

  22. South Pacific • Setting: Set in an island paradise during World War II, two parallel love stories are threatened by the dangers of prejudice and war. Nellie, a spunky nurse from Arkansas, falls in love with a mature French planter, Emile. Nellie learns that the mother of his children was an island native and, unable to turn her back on the prejudices with which she was raised, refuses Emile's proposal of marriage. Meanwhile, the strapping Lt. Joe Cable denies himself the fulfillment of a future with an innocent Tonkinese girl with whom he's fallen in love out of the same fears that haunt Nellie. When Emile is recruited to accompany Joe on a dangerous mission that claims Joe's life, Nellie realizes that life is too short not to seize her own chance for happiness, thus confronting and conquering her prejudices. • Book by Joshua Logan, Oscar Hammerstein II; • Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II; • Music by Richard Rodgers. • Original Production: Apr 7, 1949 - Jan 16, 1954 • Show has had two revivals: 1955, 2008-2010

  23. The Sound of Music • Setting: Austria. Early in 1938. When a postulant proves too high-spirited for the religious life, she is dispatched to serve as governess for the seven children of a widowed naval captain. Her growing rapport with the youngsters, coupled with her generosity of spirit, gradually captures the heart of the stern captain, and they marry. Upon returning from their honeymoon they discover that Austria has been invaded by the Nazis, who demand the captain's immediate service in the German navy. The family makes a narrow escape over the mountains to Switzerland on the eve of World War II. • Book by Howard Lindsay, Russel Crouse; • Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II; • Music by Richard Rodgers. • Original Production: Nov 16, 1959 - Jun 15, 1963 • Show has had one revival: Mar 12, 1998 - Jun 20, 1999

  24. My Fair Lady • Setting: In and around London, 1912. Professor Higgins, a world renown phoneticist, makes a bet that he can pass a London street urchin with a horrendous cockney accent, Eliza Dolittle, off as a lady to the Queen of England. • Book by Alan Jay Lerner; • Lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner; • Music by Frederick Loewe. • Based on: Pygmalion. • Original Production: Mar 15, 1956 - Sep 29, 1962 • Show has had three revivals: 1976 - 77, 1981, 1993 – 94.

  25. West Side Story • Setting: The West Side of New York City during the last days of Summer. 1957. West Side Story transposes Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet to the gang-ridden streets of Manhattan in the 1950s. Instead of the Capulets and Montagues, we have the Puerto Rican Sharks versus the Anglo Jets. In place of Romeo and Juliet are Tony and Maria, two teens torn between ethnic loyalty and their intense, abrupt love for one another. • Book by Arthur Laurents; • Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim; • Music by Leonard Bernstein. • Based on: Romeo and Juliet. • Original Production: Sep 26, 1957 - Jun 27, 1959 • Show has had four revivals: 1960, 1964, 1980, 2009 - present

  26. Fiddler on the Roof • Setting: The eve of the Russian Revolution. Fiddler on the Roof is set in the small Jewish village of Anatevka, Russia, in 1905 and is concerned primarily with the efforts of Tevye, a dairyman, his wife, Golde, and their five daughters to keep to Jewish traditions and cope with their harsh existence under Tsarist rule. • Book by Joseph Stein; • Lyrics by Sheldon Harnick; • Music by Jerry Bock. • Original Production: Sep 22, 1964 - Jul 2, 1972 • Show has had four revivals: 1976 - 77, 1981, 1990 - 91, 2004 – 06.

  27. Chicago • Setting: Chicago, Illinois. The late 1920s. What becomes a legend most? For a couple of Jazz Age entertainers, it's all about fame, fortune - and murder. • Book by Bob Fosse, Fred Ebb; • Lyrics by Fred Ebb; • Music by John Kander. • Based on: Chicago. • Original production: Jun 3, 1975 - Aug 27, 1977 • Show is currently on Broadway as a revival: Nov 14, 1996 - Present

  28. Annie • Setting: December 11-25, 1933. New York City. During the Great Depression era, Annie, an orphan that sneaks out of a Manhattan orphanage, is caught and returned to Miss Hannigan, the wicked lady that runs the place. An opportunity arises in which Annie is allowed to spend the Christmas holidays with the richest man in America, Oliver Warbucks. Annie warms the heart of Warbucks and a massive search for Annie’s parents ensues. This raises the opportunity for Hannigan, her brother Rooster and his girlfriend to try and con Warbucks out of a reward. • Book by Thomas Meehan; • Lyrics by Martin Charnin; • Music by Charles Strouse. • Original Production: Apr 21, 1977 - Jan 2, 1983 • Show had one revival: Mar 26, 1997 - Oct 19, 1997

  29. Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat • Setting: Jacob lived in Biblical times and had twelve sons of whom Joseph was his favorite. Joseph's brothers resented the favoritism and the fact that Joseph had high aspirations. Jacob gave Joseph a beautiful coat and that was the last straw for his brothers. They threw him in a pit and were going to leave him when they were approached by Egyptians. They changed their minds and sold Joseph off to slavery in Egypt, telling their father he had been killed. Through hard work and his ability to interpret dreams, Joseph works his way up the Egyptian social ladder until he is the assistant to the Pharaoh. When a famine strikes, Joseph's brothers end up in Egypt begging Joseph for food. After testing them, Joseph gives them food and reveals his identity and the whole family moves to Egypt. • Book and Lyrics by Tim Rice; • Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber. • Original Production: Jan 27, 1982 - Sep 4, 1983 • Show had one revival: Nov 10, 1993 - May 29, 1994

  30. Cats • Setting: An all-singing, all-dancing musical spectacular based on the poems from T.S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. Directed by Trevor Nunn and with musical staging by Gillian Lynne, Cats has conquered the world with a score which includes the hit song "Memory". • Lyrics by T.S. Eliot; • Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber. • Original Production was the only production and stands as the second longest running musical in Broadway history. • Oct 7, 1982 - Sep 10, 2000 • Total Performances: 7485

  31. Les Miserables • Setting: In France: Jean Valjean is released from prison after 19 years in a quarry for stealing bread. He is hardened till he met a Bishop who let him stay for a night. Valjean changes and becomes the mayor after 9 years. Inspector Javert recognizes him and tries to reveal who he is. Fantine, a factory worker is fired because she has a child out of wedlock. As a result, Fantine becomes a prostitute and becomes sick. Valjean realizes what has happened to her and takes care of her. Inspect Javert finally manages to reveal Valjean for who he was. Fantine dies and give Valjean the authority to take care of her child, Cosette. Valjean escapes and finds the child and they live in a church for 10 years. Cosette, now a woman, goes to Paris with Valjean during a revolution. Cosette meets a man, Marius, and they fall in love. Inspector Javert finally realizes that Valjean is in Paris and tries to find him again. • Book by Alain Boublil, Claude-Michel Schönberg; • Lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer; • Music by Claude-Michel Schönberg. • Original production: Mar 12, 1987 - May 18, 2003 • Show had one revival: Nov 9, 2006 - Jan 6, 2008

  32. Phantom of the Opera • Setting: Paris Opéra House. 1881-1911. The musical tells the story of the hideously deformed Phantom who lurks beneath the stage of the Paris Opera, exercising a reign of terror over all its occupants. He falls fatally in love with the young soprano Christine, devoting himself to creating a new star for the Opera by nurturing her extraordinary talents and employing all the skills at his disposal. • Book by Richard Stilgoe, Andrew Lloyd Webber; • Lyrics by Charles Hart; • Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber. • Only production: Jan 26, 1988 - Present • Phantom is currently the longest running musical in Broadway history with a total number of performances at 9539 as of January 2, 2011.

  33. Miss Saigon • Setting: Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City); USA; Bangkok. 1975 - October 1978. Miss Saigon relates the story of Puccini's Madama Butterfly set during the Vietnam War. As the war turns against the Americans, villagers are rushing to Saigon for refuge. One of them is Kim, a 17-year-old girl whose family was killed. She becomes a stripper at the Dreamland club where she meets a young American GI, Chris. The two quickly fall in love and move in together. When Saigon falls however, Chris is evacuated. Thinking he would never see Kim again, he marries an American woman, Ellen. Two years later, Chris's friend, John, informs Chris that he has fathered Kim's child. After Chris and his wife meet Kim in Bangkok, Thailand, Kim gives Chris the child, and then commits suicide. • Book by Alain Boublil, Claude-Michel Schönberg; • Lyrics by Alain Boublil, Richard Maltby, Jr.; • Music by Claude-Michel Schönberg. • Original and only production: Apr 11, 1991 - Jan 28, 2001. • Show is famous for a life-size helicopter that descends from the top of the stage.

  34. Sweeny ToddThe Demon Barber of Fleet Street • Setting: The 19th Century. London. Fleet Street and environs. Sweeney Todd, aka Benjamin Barker, returns to London after being sent away by Judge Turpin. He opens a barber shop above Mrs. Lovett's Meat Pie Shop where she sells 'the worst pies in London'. Todd kills all the people who have ever done him wrong and, with the help of Mrs. Lovett who puts the bodies in her pies, hopes to be reunited with his daughter, Joanna, who is now Judge Turpin's ward. • Book by Hugh Wheeler; • Music & Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim; • Original production: Mar 1, 1979 - Jun 29, 1980 • Show has had two revivals: 1989 - 90, 2005 - 06

  35. Seussical: The Musical • A musical adaptation of the children's books by Dr. Seuss. His characters come to life to restore harmony in the Jungle of Nool after chaos erupts. • Book by Lynn Ahrens, Stephen Flaherty; • Lyrics by Lynn Ahrens; • Music by Stephen Flaherty. • Original Production: Nov 30, 2000 - May 20, 2001 • No revivals as of yet.

  36. Wicked • Setting: Oz: Shiz; the Emerald City; If you think you know the two iconic witches from Oz — the Wicked Witch (Elphaba) and the Good Witch (Glinda) — think again. • Book by Winnie Holzman; • Music & Lyrics by Stephen Schwartz; • Only production: Oct 30, 2003 - Present

  37. A Little Night Music American Idiot Billy Elliot: the Musical Chicago In the Heights Jersey Boys La Cage aux Folles Mama Mia! Mary Poppins Memphis Million Dollar Quartet Next to Normal Rock of Ages Spider-Man The Addams Family The Lion King The Phantom of the Opera Wicked Musicals Currently on Broadway

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