Search results
People also ask
What is musical theater?
What is musical theatre based on?
How does a musical theater work?
What is a musical theater performance?
Musical theatre is a form of theatrical performance that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting and dance. The story and emotional content of a musical – humor, pathos, love, anger – are communicated through words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an integrated whole.
Apr 18, 2024 · A musical is a theatrical production that is characteristically sentimental and amusing in nature, with a simple but distinctive plot, and offering music, dancing, and dialogue. Notable musicals include Show Boat (1927), Oklahoma! (1943), West Side Story (1957), Hair (1967), Cats (1981), and Hamilton (2015).
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Learn about musical theater using examples from Broadway, the history, structure and elements of musical theater, musical theater's role in social commentary, its legacy, and how you too can create a musical.
- Beginnings
- Development of Musical Comedy
- Operetta and World War I
- The Roaring Twenties
- The 1930s
- The Golden Age
- More Recent Eras
Musical theater in Europe dates back to the theater of the ancient Greeks, who included music and dance in their stage comedies and tragedies as early as the fifth century B.C.E. Aeschylus and Sophocles even composed their own music to accompany their plays. The third century B.C.E. Roman comedies of Plautus included song and dance routines perform...
The first theater piece that conforms to the modern conception of a musical is generally considered to be The Black Crook, which premiered in New York on September 12, 1866. The production was a staggering five-and-a-half hours long, but despite its length, it ran for a record-breaking 474 performances. The same year, The Black Domino/Between You, ...
Among the best-known composers of operetta, beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century, were Jacques Offenbach and Johann Strauss II. In England, W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan created an English answer to French operetta, styled British comic opera, that became family-friendly hits in Britain and America in the 1870s and 1880s. Alth...
By the end of the 1920s, motion pictures like The Jazz Singer could be presented with synchronized sound, and critics wondered if the cinema would replace live theater altogether. The musicals of the Roaring Twenties, borrowing from vaudeville, music hall, and other light entertainments, tended to ignore the plot in favor of emphasizing star actors...
Encouraged by the success of Show Boat, creative teams began following the format of that popular hit. Of Thee I Sing (1931), a political satire with music by George Gershwin and lyrics by Ira Gershwin and Morrie Ryskind, was the first musical to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize. The Band Wagon (1931), with a score by Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz,...
The Golden Age of the Broadway musical is generally considered to have begun with Oklahoma! (1943) and to have ended with Hair(1968).
1970s
After the success of Hair, rock musicals flourished in the 1970s, with Jesus Christ Superstar, Godspell, Grease, and Two Gentlemen of Verona. Some of these rock musicals began with "concept albums" and then moved to film or stage, such as Tommy. Others had no dialogue or were otherwise reminiscent of opera, with dramatic, emotional themes; these were referred to as rock operas. The musical also went in other directions. Shows like Raisin, Dreamgirls, Purlie, and The Wiz brought a significant...
1980s and 1990s
The 1980s and 1990s saw the influence of European "mega-musicals" or "pop operas," which typically featured a pop-influenced score and had large casts and sets and were identified as much by their notable effects—a falling chandelier (in Phantom), a helicopter landing on stage (in Miss Saigon)—as they were by anything else in the production. Many were based on novels or other works of literature. The most important writers of mega-musicals include the French team of Claude-Michel Schönberg an...
Nov 21, 2023 · The musical theater definition is a play that uses music to forward its narrative. This means that the songs in a musical theater performance are not simply a piece of...
- 7 min
- What is the purpose of musical theatre?Musical theatre is a type of entertainment. Consequently, it has several purposes, including entertaining its audience, evoking emotions, and makin...
- What are the different types of musical theatre?Like many other forms of performance, there are many types of musical theatre. For instance, one popular sub-genre is the rock musical. Other types...
- What are the key elements of musical theatre?Musical theatre uses songs to advance the plot. This distinguishes it from a variety show and other minor forms of performance. Unlike an opera, ac...
Revise. Test. What is Musical theatre? Music can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable. — Leonard Bernstein. Musical theatre is different to dramatic theatre in that it...
May 25, 2023 · Theater is crafted specifically with the notion of performance for a live audience. A great play on the page is literature; a great play on the stage is theater. This changes the equation from other genres in two ways: it’s never the same play twice and it inherently requires community. Musical Theater and Community.
