"No legs, no jokes, no chance": a history of the American musical theater

The history of the American musical is framed by spectacular successes driven by Faustian elements: The Black Crook (1866, running for decades, based loosely on Weber’s Der Freischütz [The Freeshooter]) and The Phantom of the Opera (1988; still running as of 2019). Yet, straightforwardly Faust-based musicals are rare, with Damn Yankees (1955) being the single obvious example. A discussion of Damn Yankees relates it to other treatments in popular culture, including the film version of The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941), as a basis for a wider discussion of Faustian elements deployed in American musical theater, including magic, striving, earning, idealism, temptation, and sexuality, leading to a consideration of the Faustian bargain of the genre itself, which uses the magic of music, dance, sex, and spectacle to seduce audiences and achieve commercial success, but at the apparent price of its artistic soul.

Download Full-text

Oklahoma!

10.1093/oso/9780190665203.001.0001 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Tim Carter

Keyword(s):

Musical Theater ◽

Final Shape ◽

Broadway Musical ◽

History Of ◽

Rodgers And Hammerstein ◽

Theatre Guild

Oklahoma! premiered on Broadway on 31 March 1943 under the auspices of the Theatre Guild, and today it is performed more frequently than any other Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. When this book was first published in 2007, it offered the first fully documented history of the making of the show based on archival materials, manuscripts, journalism, and other sources. The present revised edition draws still further on newly uncovered sources to provide an even clearer account of a work that many have claimed fundamentally changed Broadway musical theater. It is filled with rich and fascinating details about the play on which Oklahoma! was based (Lynn Riggs’s Green Grow the Lilacs); on what encouraged Theresa Helburn and Lawrence Langner of the Guild to bring Rodgers and Hammerstein together for their first collaboration; on how Rouben Mamoulian and Agnes de Mille became the director and choreographer; on the drafts and revisions that led the show toward its final shape; and on the rehearsals and tryouts that brought it to fruition. It also examines the lofty aspirations and the mythmaking that surrounded Oklahoma! from its very inception, and demonstrates just what made it part of its times.

Download Full-text

Pages of the history of Ossetian art: national opera studio at the moscow conservatory

Вестник Владикавказского научного центра ◽

10.46698/h0049-6780-1624-z ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Т.Э. Батагова

Keyword(s):

Musical Theater ◽

The State ◽

Educational Process ◽

Archival Documents ◽

National Opera ◽

History Of ◽

The Creation ◽

State Strategy

Данная статья посвящена одному из аспектов становления и раз- вития осетинского национального музыкального театра. Раскрывается исто- рия создания и функционирования Осетинской оперной студии при Московской государственной консерватории. Формирование национальных оперных студий явилось одной из составляющих государственной стратегии по ускоренному развитию музыкального искусства в национальных республиках. Выпускники Осетинской оперной студии составили основу Оперного ансамбля (1951), а за- тем и оперной труппы национального музыкального театра (1958, 1972). Осо- бое внимание автор уделил изучению архивных документов, материалов прес- сы, раскрывающих особенности учебного процесса и творческой деятельности студийцев. This article is devoted to one of the aspects of formation and development of the Ossetian national musical theater. The history of the creation and functioning of the Ossetian Opera Studio at the Moscow State Conservatory is revealed. The formation of national Opera studios was one of the components of the state strategy for the accelerated development of musical art in the national republics. Graduates of the Ossetian opera studio formed the basis of the Opera ensemble (1951), and then the Opera Сompany of the National Musical Theater (1958, 1972). The author paid special attention to the study of archival documents and press materials that reveal the features of the educational process and creative activities of students.

Download Full-text

Exoticized Voices, Racialized Bodies

Mormons, Musical Theater, and Belonging in America ◽

10.5622/illinois/9780252042515.003.0005 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 83-112

Author(s):

Jake Johnson

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Musical Theater ◽

Musical Life ◽

Cultural Center ◽

White American ◽

Book Of Mormon ◽

American Values ◽

History Of ◽

Polynesian Cultural Center ◽

The 1960S

Just as Mormons used musical theater to purchase whiteness in the early twentieth century, so too do Mormons begin in the 1960s to use musical theater to associate other racial minorities with white American values. By allowing certain groups the opportunity to voice whiteness through the conventions of musical theater, Mormons reimagined the genre as a tool to transform some minority members into exemplars of whiteness. This chapter first details the history of Mormonism in Hawaii and the musical theater productions at the Mormon-owned Polynesian Cultural Center that began there in 1963. Importantly, Mormons have long understood dark-skinned Polynesians, like themselves, to be a chosen people, rather than cursed--displaced Jews, in fact, whose origins are explained in The Book of Mormon. The chapter then analyzes the Mormon musical Life . . . More Sweet than Bitter, billed as a sequel to Fiddler on the Roof, for its narrative explicitly connecting Mormons to Judaism. The musical stage thus becomes for modern Mormons a reckoning device to demonstrate belonging and acceptance in exotic terms--“whitening” the dark-skinned Polynesians and demonstrating fluidity between Mormonism and Judaism.

Download Full-text

From Film Score to Art Music and Back

Rethinking Prokofiev ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190670764.003.0011 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 173-192

Author(s):

Julia Khait

Keyword(s):

Musical Theater ◽

Film Music ◽

Art Music ◽

Compositional Techniques ◽

Sergei Prokofiev ◽

Film Scores ◽

Film Score ◽

Stylistic Evolution ◽

History Of ◽

Ivan The Terrible

Sergei Prokofiev was one of a few composers who worked equally successfully in the fields of film music and art music. His scores for Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible are as significant for the history of film music as are his operas and ballets for musical theater. He approached film projects with the same creative rigor as his stage and symphonic works. And so we must think of his film scores not as a separate enterprise but, rather, as one of the various theatrical and dramatic genres at which he tried his hand. While the operatic features of his music for Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible have become widely recognized, Prokofiev’s other film scores can also be placed in a broader context of the composer’s output. The cross-connections between genres can be traced at different levels, from common themes and literary ideas and similar stylistic evolution, to shared compositional techniques and borrowings of musical material from one work to another.

Download Full-text

The Golden Apple

10.1093/oso/9780190458294.003.0018 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Howard Pollack

Keyword(s):

New York ◽

Twentieth Century ◽

Musical Theater ◽

Early Twentieth Century ◽

Short Run ◽

American Musical Theater ◽

Judgment Of Paris ◽

Twentieth Century America ◽

The Phoenix

One of Latouche’s masterpieces, the opera The Golden Apple, with composer Jerome Moross, reimagines the Judgment of Paris story and the Homeric epics through the prism of early-twentieth-century America. Hanya Holm directed, and William and Jean Eckart did the memorable designs. First premiering at the Phoenix Theatre off-Broadway, it moved to Broadway for a short run there. Although more a critical than a popular sucess—it won the Donaldson Award, the Page One Award, and the New York Critics’ Circle Award for the season’s best musical—it remains a favorite among connoisseurs of American musical theater.

Download Full-text