chapter 12

Operetta

("light opera") - differs from "grand opera" because it has a frivolous, comic theme, some spoken dialogue, a melodramatic story, and usually a little dancing.

World War I

- Big-ticket musical comedies were dominating Broadway; patriotic and sentimental their cardboard characters and flimsy stories never stood in the way of giving audiences an evening of entertainment and plenty of catchy tunes. Composers: George M. Cohan (1878-1942) Irving Berlin (1888-1989) Post WWI - Jazz began influencing the American musical with pit orchestras led by soon-to-be-famous big band leaders Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman. Composers: George and Ira Gershwin (1898-1937 and 1896-1983)

Burlesque

- around 1840 in America burlesque was "all the rage;" featured songs, skits and plenty of racy dancing girls in a "leg-show." Note: The original purpose of burlesque was to lampoon high society's operatic tradition by turning it into a kind of sexy caricature.

THE RAILROAD, THE WAR, and ALL THAT JAZZ

1869 - the completion of the first transcontinental railroad across the United States 1900 - spawned nearly 300 touring companies Most of the plays were melodramas, but there were also plenty of musicals, which were fast becoming America's favorite form of entertainment.

The SHOWBOAT REVOLUTION

1927 - Showboat by lyricist-librettist Oscar Hammerstein (1895-1960) and composer Jerome Kern (1885-1945) revolutionized musical theatre by combining musical comedy and serious drama to create what we recognize today as the quintessential American musical. Showboat was the first production to combine dancing, choruses, toe-tapping melodies, and huge spectacle with a strong plot and plausible characters. 1927-1928 Broadway season had more than seventy theatre with a total of 264 productions, including 46 musicals—a record that has never been broken. 1929 As film increasingly met its needs, the mass audience drifted away from theatre. The shift was accelerated especially by the almost simultaneous advent of sound films ("talkies") and a major economic depression, because not only was film's entertainment potential greatly increased by sound but also its ticket prices were a fraction of those for live theatre. Between 1929 and 1939 approximately two-thirds of all live-entertainment theaters in the United States closed!

OPERA

Developed during the Italian Renaissance in the late 1500s. Creators were attempting to imitate ancient Greek tragedies. First public opera house was built in Venice in 1637. Hit its peak in the nineteenth century. Composers: Richard Wagner (1813-1883) Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) Wolfgang Mozart (1756-1791) Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868) George Frideric Handel (1685-1759)

THE UNITED STATES' FIRST MODERN MUSICAL

The Black Crook (1866) - a melodrama about a crook-backed practitioner of black magic in a production described as an "extravaganza" that included demons and sprites and "bare-armed" women. A massive success, it turned over $1 million in profits on a $25,000 investment. Such early musical plays lacked strong plot and believable characters, but both were deemed unnecessary because entertainment was the primary purposes, not drama.

AFRICAN AMERICAN MUSICALS

The success of The Black Crook also opened the door for the first full-length musical comedies conceived, written, produced, and performed by African Americans in New York: A Trip to Coontown (1898) - a spoof of A Trip to Chinatown, a popular musical comedy The Origin of the Cakewalk (1898) - the first all-black show to play at a top Broadway theatre By the 1920s there were a host of black musical and revues with black casts and many with black writers, but blacks and whites acting together on stage was still considered improper, at least by whites. Not until 1959 did a straight play by a black playwright make it to Broadway: A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry.

THE END OR A NEW BEGINNING?

Today, a golden age of musicals exists not in the United States but in INDIA and they are as immensely popular as U.S. musical once were. Bollywood (blends "Hollywood" and "Bombay") movies and musicals have helped to define the national character of this huge country with seventeen major languages, five thousand gods, and six primary religions. Every year 3.5 billion people see a Bollywood movie. That is one billion people a year more than see Hollywood movies! There are now more than one hundred cinemas in the United States that regularly show Bollywood movies (Slumdog Millionaire even won Oscar for Best Picture!) The main problem for American musical theatre today is the cost: as much as $12 million As production costs have increased, so have ticket prices. Today, only Disney and other huge corporations can afford to foot the bill for huge new musicals. Consequently, some Broadway producers have turned to staging revivals of popular older musicals. Others are trying to ensure success by basing "new" musicals on well-known Hollywood movies. Another way of creating hit musicals is to build stories around popular music the audience already knows: 2001 - Mamma Mia 2005 - Jersey Boys In the development of the American musical, there have been good years and bad, but the American musical is far from dead. Today, there are musicals to fit every taste: rock and roll musicals, musicals based on movies, and traditional revivals of Broadway classics.

The HISTORY of plays with music:

Was the musical an American invention? Though Americans were not the first to add song and dance to the theatre, they did make a unique form of musical theatre by borrowing from and combining other forms.

THOROUGHLY MODERN MUSICALS

World War II After the United States entered WWII at the end of 1941, musicals returned for a while to flimsy plots with a patriotic flair. 1943 - Oklahoma! by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein Like Showboat, it had well-developed characters, song-and-dance numbers integrated into the story, and some serious plot elements, including a murder. It even incorporated classical ballet. At the end of the war, Americans seemed filled with optimism, believing that they had saved the world for democracy and that the American dream of prosperity, order, and happiness was within everyone's grasp. This optimism led to two decades that many consider the golden age of great American musicals which provided more than just light entertainment; they combined powerful, often serious stories with musical numbers that advanced the plot, such as 1957 - West Side Story Composer, Leonard Bernstein with lyrics by Stephen Sondheim with a book by librettist Arthur Laurents based on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. 1960s and 1970s - broke even more expectations and took on more risks 1966 - Cabaret showed Germany's political freedom and cultural experimentation pre-Nazi 1967 - Hair introduced rock music, hippies, and nudity to the musical 1975 - The Wiz retold the story of the Wizard of Oz from an all-black perspective 1975 - A Chorus Line dealt with homosexuality in a matter-of-fact way

showstopper

a big production number Songs are placed strategically within the story, usually at points where dialogue is not sufficient, so the characters must break into song to fully express what they are feeling and cause the audience to experience an emotional response.

Opera

a drama that is set entirely to music; all the lines are sung, usually to grand, classical music.

ballad

a love song

definition of overture

a medley of the show's songs played as a preview

Vaudeville

a popular form of stage entertainment from the 1880s to the 1940s. Note: Vaudeville in turn descends from...

Revue

a program of satirical sketches, singing, and dancing on a particular theme.

Variety Show

a program of unrelated singing, dancing, and comedy numbers Note: Both revues and variety shows descend from...

During the show, different types of songs are used for different dramatic (to advance the storyline) & theatrical (to produce a torrent of laughter and/or applause) purposes

ballad, comedy number, showstopper, reprise

Vaudeville

by 1890 vaudeville had replaced burlesque as the dominant form of American musical entertainment; designed to be more respectable, wholesome, and family-oriented. Most vaudeville companies were small and traveled the rails from town to town putting on one-night shows in local theatres. Big-time vaudeville featured a series of lavish musical reviews on Broadway, featuring popular stars, epitomized by the Ziegfeld Follies (1907-1931). TV Examples: Variety shows between the 1950s and 1970s (the Ed Sullivan Show, the Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour, the Carol Burnett Show) were all descendents of vaudeville. Reality-TV Format: America's Got Talent, Dancing with the Stars, American Idol

Musical Comedy

characterized by a light-hearted, fast-moving comic story, whose dialogue is interspersed with popular music.

Burlesque

form of musical entertainment featuring bawdy songs, dancing women, and sometimes striptease; began in the 1840s as a parody of the pretentiousness of opera.

Straight Musical

has a more serious plot and theme.

Comic Opera

including operetta, developed out of intermezzi, or comic interludes performed during the intermissions of operas. Composers: Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836-1911) Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan (1842-1900)

The STRUCTURE of plays with music

music, lyrics, book, composer, lyristist, librettist, book musicals, operatic musicals

operatic musicals

musicals that are mostly singing and have less spoken dialogue

dance musicals

musicals that feature the work of a director-choreographer

book musicals

musicals with a particularly well-developed story and characters

The FORMS of plays with music

opera, operetta, musical comedy, straight musical, rock musical, revue, variety show, vaudeville, burlesque

A traditional musical begins with an

overture

There are two categories of theatre

plays with music and plays without music (.a.k.a. straight plays).

comedy number

provides comic relief

reprise

some songs are followed later by repetition, sometimes with new lyrics, sometimes with the same lyrics but with new meaning or subtext in order to make a dramatic point.

Ballad Opera

the earliest American musicals, brought from England and popular during the colonial period. Mixed popular songs of the day with spoken dialogue.

music

the orchestrated melodies written by the - Composer

books

the spoken lines of dialogue as well as the plot by the- Librettist

lyrics

the sung words written by the - Lyricist

Minstrel Show

unique to the United States, these musical shows came to prominence in the 1830s and lasted well into the twentieth century. Included comic scenes, dance interludes, and sentimental ballads, all based on white stereotypes of black life in the South. Flourished because black music was very popular, but it was considered improper for whites to go to a theatre to hear black musicians play, so white performers put on blackface - and minstrel shows provided Northern white audiences with an idea of what the lives of the slaves were like. Disclaimer re: Minstrel Shows: The early minstrel shows were nothing but entertainment and they never challenged white audiences to think about the atrocities of slavery. In fact, the skits in the minstrel shows often contained illiterate and foolish exchanges that made fun of blacks. However, during the Civil War years (1860s) some black performers also painted their faces black and formed their own minstrel troupes. The most famous minstrel performers in the late 1800s and early 1900s were black. When Hollywood got into the act, the faces under the black makeup were once again white. The first "talkie" movie, The Jazz Singer (1927) featured white actor Al Jolson in blackface performing in a minstrel show. Not until the 1950s and 1960s brought the civil rights movement did minstrel shows fall into total disrepute.

Rock Musical

uses rock music from the rock and roll of the 50s to contemporary pop