Musical

musical

 or musical comedy

Theatrical production that is characteristically sentimental and amusing in nature, having a simple but distinctive plot and offering music, dancing, and dialogue. Its roots can be traced to 18th- and 19th-century genres such as ballad opera, singspiel, and opéra comique. The Black Crook (1866), often called the first musical comedy, attracted patrons of opera and serious drama as well as those of burlesque shows. European composers such as Sigmund Romberg brought to the U.S. a form of operetta that was the generic source for musical comedy. George M. Cohan ushered in the genre's heyday, and in the 1920s and '30s it entered its richest period with the works of Jerome Kern, George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, and Oscar Hammerstein. Kern and Hammerstein's Show Boat (1927) was perhaps the first musical to employ music thoroughly integrated with the narrative. The genre flourished in the 1950s with works by composers such as Leonard Bernstein, but it began to decline in the late 1960s, by which time musicals had begun to diverge in many different directions, incorporating elements such as rock music, operatic styling, extravagant lighting and staging, social comment, nostalgia, and pure spectacle. Later notable musical composers included Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber.

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Musical 

a primarily light play in which the resources of the stage, popular music, choreography, drama, and opera are used. The musical was developed in the USA in the late 19th century.

Bicknell’s play, The Black Crook, which combined melodrama, song, and “showgirls,” was first presented in 1866 and played for 25 years. In New York in the early 20th century the Negro actors B. Williams and G. Walker presented several musical comedies distinguished for their originality and striking theatricality. (The composer of these comedies was W. M. Cook.) The musical comedy became the most popular form of American theater, particularly after World War I. The best of the later musicals include Kern’s Show Boat (1929), Gershwin’s Of Thee I Sing (1931), Weill’s Johnny Johnson (1936), Rodgers’ Oklahoma! (1943), Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate (1948), Loewe’s My Fair Lady (1956), and Herman’s Hello, Dolly! (1964). They were distinguished by their content, fine directorial skill, brilliant visual impact, and melodious, catchy music.

Dance is a major component of musicals. At first primarily tap dancing and chorus-line numbers were used, but in Bernstein’s West Side Story, one of the best American musicals (choreographer Jerome Robbins, 1957), the dance attained outstanding dramatic expressiveness.

The popularity and accessibility of musicals are often exploited by impresarios who form touring companies of the most successful shows and present them in other countries. Often, movies are based on musicals: Oliver! (Bart, Great Britain, 1970); Funny Girl (Styne, USA, 1969); The Girls From Rochefort (Legrand, France, 1966); and The Old Folks at the Hops Harvest (Bažant, Malásek, and Hála, Czechoslovakia, 1964).

The musicals West Side Story, My Fair Lady, and Kiss Me, Kate have been presented in theaters in the USSR. Among the shows presented as musicals are My Brother Plays The Clarinet (Fel’tsman, 1968, at the Moscow Theater for Young Audiences), the cartoon The Bremen Musicians (Gladkov, 1970), and the film Shel’menko the Batman (Solov’ev-Sedoi, 1971).

REFERENCES

Volyntsev, A. “Azbuka zhanra.” Teatr, 1967, no. 9.
Ewen, D. The Story of America’s Musical Theater. Philadelphia, 1961.
Osolsobĕ, Y. Muzikál je, když Prague, 1967.

A. V. VOLYNTSEV