Transcript Musical Theatre History

Musical Theatre History
Development of the Musical
Primitive Man -Medieval Europe

Caveman - explained customs through music,
song, dance, and acting
 5th Century B.C. - sang (chanted) lines,
chorus moved rhythmically to music
 Rome - pantomimes used a dancer to relate
story through movement as chorus sang
narration
 Medieval Europe - wandering performers
provided entertainment for castles (nobles)
and town festivals (everyone else)
Renaissance - 18th Century

Italian
 Commedia
dell’arte used singing and
dancing
 Intermezzo (between acts) used songs,
dancers, music, scenery, SFX
 1st opera: Dafne 1597 (chanted lines to
music)
Renaissance - 18th Century cont’d

English
 Used
masques, intermezzos and
background musicians for entertainment as
well as pantomime (the English version of
commedia dell’arte)
 Burlesques which featured scantily
dressed women
 Ballad Operas which featured plots,
dialogues songs with new lyrics to old
melodies (A Beggars Opera)
 Comic Opera which featured original music
(Pirates of Penzance)
19th Century - USA
Comic Operas and Pantomimes
performed
 Minstrel shows - played banjos,
tambourines, “bones”, sang, danced,
and made jokes
 Music Halls and Vaudevilles - unrelated
acts, magic, jugglers, acrobats,
sketches, animals, singers, and dancers

1st Musical

The Black Crook - Sept 12, 1866 in New
York
 Ran
474 performances
 5 1/2 hours long
 Mixture of drama, spectacle, scenery,
transformations with ballet and scantily
clad dancers
 Lots of scenic special effects
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0Uih
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 Start at 1:08

Early 20th Century - USA




Ziegfield Follies (and other revues) were the
main source of entertainment
Composers such as Irving Berlin, Cole Porter,
Jerome Kern, Victor Herbert, Richard Rodgers,
and George Gershwin got their start in these
venues
Foreshadowed our demands for glitz, glamour,
and expense in entertainment
Preproduction expenses topped $250,000 with
$123,000 going to costumes alone (the average
American earned $19.20 per week in 1920)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjExq
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 Ziegfield Follies

1920s

By the time the “Roaring 20s” came
around…
 Melodramas
took rise
 Realism and naturalism were introduces
 Lots of pressure on technical theatre to
accommodate both styles of theatre
 In reaction to these styles, anti-realistic and
anti-traditional modes of theatre began to arise
1920s (continued)

“New age of American Musical”
 Showboat
in 1927 by Jerome Kern and
Oscar Hammerstein II
 Events span 40 years
 Serious theme with musical
#s and plot
 Represented the departure from standard
musicals by introducing new elements including
spectacle, details,realism, in depth characters
 Influenced by Opera, Blues, and current
dances (Charleston)
 Grossed $50,000/wk for 2+ year run
 Revived in 1966 where it grossed $100,000/wk
Old Man River Revival
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWq
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 Start at 2:30
