Meanwhile, the film musical was also breaking new ground, though nothing as staggering as what was happening to Broadway at the time. Still, a similar movement toward deeper, more intelligent scripts was definitely underway. Meet Me In St. Louis … [Continue reading]
An Honest History of Musical Theatre, Part Sixteen
Pure Operetta continued to get made throughout this period, but it almost invariably flopped, as audiences had lost almost all patience with its more dated conventions. Song of Norway, a musically lush but dramatically vacuous Grieg pasticcio in the … [Continue reading]
An Honest History of Musical Theatre, Part Fifteen
At the same time, Opera continued to manifest on Broadway. Some of these were actually conventional Classical Operas that played in Broadway theaters, like the works of Gian-Carlo Menotti such as The Medium, The Consul and The Saint of Bleecker … [Continue reading]
An Honest History of Musical Theatre, Part Fourteen
For the rest of the Forties and most of the Fifties, things more or less followed the patterns set by the aforementioned groundbreaking shows. Rodgers and Hammerstein in particular continued to build on their own innovations, creating two more … [Continue reading]
An Honest History of Musical Theatre, Part Thirteen
The ‘revolution’ that the Musical experienced in the 1940s is generally credited almost entirely to Oklahoma!, but can really be traced to the innovations of no less than ten genre-busting stage and film musicals, of which Oklahoma! is but one … [Continue reading]
An Honest History of Musical Theater, Part Twelve
It’s worth noting that around this time a whole new Musical medium, the Movie Musical, was born. And strangely enough, it all started with Al Jolson. Jolson had innumerable stage and film vehicles, but only produced two works of lasting artistic … [Continue reading]
An Honest History of Musical Theater, Part Eleven
The 1920s and 1930s were the beginning of the portion of Broadway history that is actually widely remembered. This is almost odd, as they were not particularly good years for the genre. The shows of this era tended to follow one of two formulas, both … [Continue reading]
An Honest History of Musical Theatre, Part Ten
It’s worth noting that for the first time, in the second half of the Nineteenth Century, a genre of lightweight sub-opera like Singspiel had actually gained enough traction to stick around and carve out an identity for itself. To be precise, it was … [Continue reading]
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