Musical theater has captivated American audiences from its early roots in burlesque stage productions and minstrel shows to the million-dollar industry it has become on Broadway today. What is it about this truly indigenous American art form that has made it so enduringly popular? How has it survived, even thrived, alongside the technology of film and the glitz and glamour of Hollywood? Will it continue to evolve and leave its mark on the twenty-first century? Bringing together exclusive and previously unpublished interviews with nineteen leading composers, lyricists, librettists, directors, choreographers, and producers from the mid-1900s to the present, this book details the careers of the individuals who shaped this popular performance art during its most prolific period. The interviewees discuss their roles in productions ranging from "On the Town (1944) and "Finian's Rainbow(1947) to "The Producers (2001) and "Bounce (2003). Readers are taken onto the stage, into the rehearsals, and behind the scenes. The nuts and bolts, the alchemy, and the occasional agonies of the collaborative process are all explored. In their discussions, the artists detail their engagements with other creative forces, including such major talents as Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, Bob Fosse, Liza Minnelli, Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand, Jule Styne, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, Alan Jay Lerner, Zero Mostel, and Gwen Verdon. They speak candidly about their own work and that of their peers, their successes and failures, the creative process, and how a show progresses from its conception through rehearsals and tryouts to opening night. Taken together, these interviews give fresh insight into whatOscar Hammerstein called "a nightly miracle"--the creation of the American musical.

To see a Broadway musical is to experience how a drama, using melody, harmony, and rhythm, evokes the emotion needed to perpetuate a story line. Without music, many of these plays would not succeed, failing to convey the intended message. This new edition of Swain's classic text, winner of the 1991 ASCAP Deems Taylor Award, reveals how a musical drama achieves plot movement, character development and conflict through strategic placement of song and music in 20 musical plays. Unlike critical literature that has simply explored theatrical style and production histories, this survey focuses mainly on the power of music. Illustrated with more than 150 musical excerpts and essays, Swain includes the latest research and viewpoints of contemporary critics, offering insight into dramatic expression and how renowned composers including Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, Jerry Bock, Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber influenced the Broadway musical. This provides insights into the many impressive musicals to hit the stage between the years of 1927 and 1987, illuminating how specific revisions to productions such as Showboat and, Oklahoma forever changed their popularity. Learn how music is used as a symbol for psychological or emotional action from Shakespearean drama's such as Kiss Me, Kate and West Side Story, to more current dramas including Godspell, A Chorus Line, and Jesus Christ Superstar. Replete with a never seen before essay on Les Miserables, this edition also includes an expanded epilogue highlighting the phenomena behind Miss Saigon and Phantom of the Opera, "megamusicals" that changed the direction of the Broadway tradition. For professors of dramatic arts and people interested in Broadway musicals, theater, popular music and opera.

A major new anthology of groundbreaking American musicals.

During the 1990's, a new generation of composers, lyricists and librettists emerged radically changing the face of American musical theatre. With Broadway becoming mostly a museum for revivals and Disney blockbusters, these new artists have fashioned a more highly personal and challenging form of musical theatre less interested in pure entertainment and the creation of diversions. Their work bears the influence of composers like Stephen Sondheim, Kurt Weill, Mark Blitzstein and Leonard Bernstein and their music and lyrics demand a greater commitment from the listener. The work is often dark and the stories they illuminate cut to the heart of post-modern America.

This anthology collects for the first time the groundbreaking work of these innovative new artists:

"Rent"

Book, music and lyrics by Jonathan Larson

"The breakthrough musical for the 90's."--Jack Kroll, "Newsweek"

"Reinventing Broadway. A raw and riveting milestone in musical theatre."--Peter Travers, "Rolling Stone"

"Floyd Collins"

Music and lyrics by Adam Guettel, book by Tina Landau

"This is "the" original and daring musical of our day--a powerhouse."--"New York Magazine"

"Parade"

Music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown, book by Alfred Uhry

"A defining moment in Broadway musical theatre."--Clive Barnes, "New York Post"

Nominated for 9 Tony Awards and 13 Drama Desk Awards

Winner of 2 Tony Awards and 6 Drama Desk Awards, including Best New Musical

"The Wild Party"

Music and lyrics by Michael John La Chiusa, book by Michael John La Chiusa and George C. Wolfe

"The first musical triumph of the 21st Century."--"Daily News"

Nominated for 7 Tony Awards

Wiley Hausam is the former associate producer of The Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival and current director of the Songbook Series at Joe's Pub in New York, which features the work of new musical theatre composers. He has recently formed his own production and consultation company in New York City.

So, You're the New Musical Director! is aimed at the person who has music training but little or no experience with musical theatre, the high school choral director with a degree in music education, or the actor participating in community theatre productions. It details the duties involved in directing a Broadway musical, including overseeing singer and orchestra rehearsals and conducting the musical itself. The chapters follow the actual progression of a musical from a discussion of the production team's responsibilities to the final bow. Filled with photos, illustrations, and examples, So, You're the New Musical Director! is a comprehensive guide that no one involved in musical theatre should be without.

It used to be a secret that, in its postwar heyday, the Broadway musical recruited a massive underground following of gay men. But though this once silent social fact currently spawns jokes that every sitcom viewer is presumed to be in on, it has not necessarily become better understood.

In "Place for Us, "D. A. Miller probes what all the jokes laugh off: the embarrassingly mutual affinity between a "general" cultural form and the despised "minority" that was in fact that form's implicit audience. In a style that is in turn novelistic, memorial, autobiographical, and critical, the author restores to their historical density the main modes of reception that so many gay men developed to answer the musical's call: the early private communion with original cast albums, the later camping of show tunes in piano bars, the still later reformatting of these same songs at the post-Stonewall disco. In addition, through an extended reading of "Gypsy," Miller specifies the nature of the call itself, which he locates in the postwar musical's most basic conventions: the contradictory relation between the show and the book, the mimetic tendency of the musical number, the centrality of the female star. If the postwar musical may be called a "gay" genre, Miller demonstrates, this is because its regular but unpublicized work has been to indulge men in the spectacular thrills of a femininity become their own.

The lyricist/librettist of The Fantasticks, the longest-running show in the history of the American theatre, here takes on a new role as guide through the magical world of the stage musical. He begins his tour with a brief history, tracing the musical's origins to the variety shows and operettas of the early 1900s, from which gradually emerged the works of such masters as Kern, Berlin, Gershwin and Porter, and a tradition best exemplified by the mid-century classics of Rodgers and Hammerstein. A break-up of that tradition, reflecting the immense changes in every aspect of postwar American life, was inevitable. So, gradually new forms evolved, and today we have the "Dance Musical", the "Concept Musical", the "Rock Musical" and the "Sung-Through Musical", all running alongside shows, some hugely successful, that revive or try to reinvent the past. How to create a musical, whatever its style, is Tom Jones's concern in the longer second part of this book. He draws generously upon his own experiences, with composer Harvey Schmidt, in creating not only The Fantasticks but all their other shows. Together these musicals become a constant frame of reference as Jones explains how to get started, how to work with composers, set designers and other collaborators, how to find the spark for an effective lyric, how to create a musical rather than a play with music and how to go about getting produced.

Musicals is an illustrated sourcebook for total theatre training, emphasizing the director's role in the three main building blocks for mounting a performance: preparation, production, and performance. Boland and Argentini provide a comprehensive step-by-step theatre primer which will prove invaluable to musical directors, teachers, administrators, students, and actors. After the initial decisions are made, specific guidelines in preparing the stage picture, holding auditions and casting, and running the gamut of rehearsals are provided. Lighting, costumes, creating sets and scenery, and safety precautions are also discussed. The musical number and choreography are analyzed and defined, and advice on how to use color and solve multiple scene problems is given. With opening night approaching, a checklist of what must be done is enumerated and explained. The authors provide tips on publicity, running the box office, as well as the do's and don'ts of mounting the show and its final strike. Includes a glossary of theatrical terms, a selected bibliography, and recommended sources for scenic drops, costumes, and lighting equipment.

From Trial by Jury to The Pirates of Penzance: the complete librettos of all fourteen Gilbert and Sullivan operas.

Gilbert's verses for Sullivan's music are the most fastidiously turned and inventively rhymed in all lyric comedy. As the Savoy Operas enter their second century on a swell of renewed popularity, Gilbert's reputation as the supreme wordsmith of light opera remains secure.

Complete and authentic, these are the librettos on which modern performances and recordings are based. Scattered among the songs are over seventy of the amusing, quirky pictures Gilbert drew to illustrate them. A chronology prepared for this edition sketches the authors' lives and careers. This is a book that no lover of Gilbert and Sullivan, musical comedy, or indeed the English theater will want to be without.

(Applause Libretto Library). "Richly illustrated, it is ideal for fans of the show, as well as admirers of musical theatre." Variety * "Anybody who has seen the show (who hasn't?) should read the book" Entertainment Today * "The perfect present for any Fantasticks fans." Cleveland Plain Dealer * "A valuable resource. Recommended for all collections." Choice

Bar Yarns and Manic Depressive Mix Tapes distills thirty delirious, jam-packed years of some of the best music writing ever to come out of the Twin Cities. As a writer and musician, the ever-curious Jim Walsh has lived a life immersed in music, and it all makes its way into his columns and feature articles, interviews and reviews, including personal essays on life, love, music, family, death, and, yes, the manic-depressive highs and lows that come with being an obsessive music lover and listener. From Minneapolis's own Prince to such far-flung acts as David Bowie, the Waterboys, Lucinda Williams, Parliament-Funkadelic, L7, the Rolling Stones, the Ramones, U2, Hank Williams, Britney Spears, Elvis Presley and Nirvana, Walsh's work treats us to a chorus of the voices and sounds that have made the music scene over the past three decades. The big names are here, from Rosanne Cash to Bruce Springsteen to Bob Marley and Jackson Browne, but so are those a little shy of superstardom, like the Tin Star Sisters and Uncle Tupelo, Son Volt, the Gear Daddies, Semisonic, and The Belfast Cowboys. The book is also a tour (de force) of the Twin Cities' most celebrated music venues past and present, from the Prom Ballroom to Paisley Park to Duffy's. When Walsh isn't celebrating the sheer magic of live music or dreaming to tunes blasting from the car console, he might be surveying the scene with the Hamm's Bear at Grumpy's or the Double Deuce or singing the last night at the Uptown Bar blues. Whether he's dishing dirt with Yoko Ono or digging the Replacements' roots, giving an old rocker a spin or offering a mic to the latest upstart, Jim Walsh reminds us that in the land of a thousand lakes there are a thousand dances, and the music never dies. Capturing the pure notes and character of the sound of the Twin Cities and beyond, with a keen eye for trends and the telling detail, his book truly is a mix tape of thirty years of unforgettable music.

The songs, dances, jokes, parodies, spoofs, and skits of blackface groups such as the Virginia Minstrels and Buckley's Serenaders became wildly popular in antebellum America. Drawing on an unprecedented archival study of playbills, newspapers, sketches, monologues, and music, William J. Mahar explores the racist practices of minstrel entertainers and considers their performances as troubled representations of ethnicity, class, gender, and culture in the nineteenth century. Mahar investigates the relationships between blackface comedy and other Western genres and traditions; between the music of minstrel shows and its European sources; and between "popular" and "elite" constructions of culture. Locating minstrel performances within their complex sites of production, Mahar reassesses the historiography of the field.

You have the luck of Croesus on stilts (as my Auntie Vi would have said) if you've had the sort of career, ups and downs, warts and all that I have in that wondrous little corner of show business called musical theatre. One of the most successful and distinguished artists of our time, Andrew Lloyd Webber has reigned over the musical theatre world for nearly five decades. The winner of numerous awards, including multiple Tonys and an Oscar, Lloyd Webber has enchanted millions worldwide with his music and numerous hit shows, including Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, Cats, The Phantom of the Opera--Broadway's longest running show--and most recently, School of Rock. In Unmasked, written in his own inimitable, quirky voice, the revered, award-winning composer takes stock of his achievements, the twists of fate and circumstance which brought him both success and disappointment, and the passions that inspire and sustain him. The son of a music professor and a piano teacher, Lloyd Webber reveals his artistic influences, from his idols Rodgers and Hammerstein and the perfection of South Pacific's "Some Enchanted Evening," to the pop and rock music of the 1960s and Puccini's Tosca, to P. G. Wodehouse and T. S. Eliot. Lloyd Webber recalls his bohemian London youth, reminiscing about the happiest place of his childhood, his homemade Harrington Pavilion--a make-believe world of musical theatre in which he created his earliest entertainments. A record of several exciting and turbulent decades of British and American musical theatre and the transformation of popular music itself, Unmasked is ultimately a chronicle of artistic creation. Lloyd Webber looks back at the development of some of his most famous works and illuminates his collaborations with luminaries such as Tim Rice, Robert Stigwood, Harold Prince, Cameron Mackintosh, and Trevor Nunn. Taking us behind the scenes of his productions, Lloyd Webber reveals fascinating details about each show, including the rich cast of characters involved with making them, and the creative and logistical challenges and artistic political battles that ensued. Lloyd Webber shares his recollections of the works that have become cultural touchstones for generations of fans: writings songs for a school production that would become his first hit, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat; finding the coterie of performers for his classic rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar; developing his first megahit, Evita, which would win seven Tonys Awards, including Best Musical; staking his reputation and fortune on the groundbreaking Cats; and making history with the dazzling The Phantom of the Opera. Reflecting a life that included many passions (from architecture to Turkish Swimming Cats), full of witty and revealing anecdotes, and featuring cameo appearances by numerous celebrities--Elaine Paige, Sarah Brightman, David Frost, Julie Covington, Judi Dench, Richard Branson, A.R. Rahman, Mandy Patinkin, Patti LuPone, Richard Rodgers, Norman Jewison, Milos Forman, Placido Domingo, Barbra Streisand, Michael Crawford, Gillian Lynne, Betty Buckley, and more--Unmasked at last reveals the true face of the extraordinary man beneath the storied legend.

Experiencing Broadway Music: A Listener's Companion explores approximately the last century of American musical theater, beginning with the early-twentieth-century shift from European influenced operettas and bawdy variety shows to sophisticated works of seamlessly integrated song and dance that became uniquely American. It concludes with an examination of current musical trends and practices on Broadway. As a musician who works on Broadway and in developmental musical theater, Kat Sherrell draws on her knowledge both as a historian of Broadway musical form and as a professional Broadway musician to offer an insider's perspective on the development and execution of the past and present Broadway scores. Despite its enormous breadth, and given the historical significance of the musical in modern popular culture, Experiencing Broadway Music provides listeners-whether they know musical theater well or not at all-with the tools and background necessary to gain an understanding of the highly variegated structure and character of the Broadway musical over the past century.

(Applause Libretto Library). An emotionally powerful and intimate musical about two New Yorkers in their twenties who fall in and out of love over the course of five years. The show's unconventional structure consists of Cathy, the woman, telling her story backwards while Jamie, the man, tells his story chronologically; the two characters meet only once, at their wedding in the middle of the show. Jason Robert Brown won Drama Desk Awards for the music and the lyrics after the Off-Broadway premiere in 2002 starring Norbert Leo Butz and Sherie Rene Scott. The show has since been produced at almost every major regional theater in the U.S., and has been seen in Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Germany, Italy, Canada, Spain, and the UK.

The first comprehensive survey of the works of Andrew Lloyd Webber, the best-known composer of musical theater of our generation Andrew Lloyd Webber is the most famous-and most controversial-composer of musical theater alive today. Hundreds of millions of people have seen his musicals, which include Cats, The Phantom of the Opera, Starlight Express, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, and Sunset Boulevard. Even more know his songs. Lloyd Webber's many awards include seven Tonys and three Grammys-but he has nonetheless been the subject of greater critical vitriol than any of his artistic peers. Why have both the man and his work provoked such extreme responses? Does he challenge his audiences, or merely recycle the comfortable and familiar? Over three decades, how has Lloyd Webber changed fundamentally what a musical can be? In this sustained examination of Lloyd Webber's creative career, the music scholar John Snelson explores the vast range of influences that have informed Lloyd Webber's work, from film, rock, and pop music to Lloyd Webber's own life story. This rigorous and sympathetic survey will be essential reading for anyone interested in Lloyd Webber's musicals and the world of modern musical theater that he has been so instrumental in shaping.

From the author of the acclaimed "Everybody Was So Young," the definitive and major biography of the great choreographer and Broadway legend Jerome Robbins
To some, Jerome Robbins was a demanding perfectionist, a driven taskmaster, a theatrical visionary; to others, he was a loyal friend, a supportive mentor, a generous and entertaining companion and colleague. Born Jerome Rabinowitz in New York City in 1918, Jerome Robbins repudiated his Jewish roots along with his name only to reclaim them with his triumphant staging of "Fiddler on the Roof." A self-proclaimed homosexual, he had romances or relationships with both men and women, some famous--like Montgomery Clift and Natalie Wood--some less so. A resolutely unpolitical man, he was forced to testify before Congress at the height of anti-Communist hysteria. A consummate entertainer, he could be paralyzed by shyness; nearly infallible professionally, he was conflicted, vulnerable, and torn by self-doubt. Guarded and adamantly private, he was an inveterate and painfully honest journal writer who confided his innermost thoughts and aspirations to a remarkable series of diaries and memoirs. With ballets like "Dances at a Gathering," "Afternoon of a Faun," and "The Concert, " he humanized neoclassical dance; with musicals like "On the Town," "Gypsy," and "West Side Story," he changed the face of theater in America.
In the pages of this definitive biography, Amanda Vaill takes full measure of the complicated, contradictory genius who was Jerome Robbins. She re-creates his childhood as the only son of Russian Jewish immigrants; his apprenticeship as a dancer and Broadway chorus gypsy; his explosion into prominence at the age of twenty-five with the ballet "Fancy Free" and its Broadway incarnation, "On the Town"; and his years of creative dominance in both theater and dance. She brings to life his colleagues and friends--from Leonard Bernstein and George Balanchine to Robert Wilson and Robert Graves--and his loves and lovers. And she tells the full story behind some of Robbins's most difficult episodes, such as his testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee and his firing from the film version of "West Side Story."
Drawing on thousands of pages of documents from Robbins's personal and professional papers, to which she was granted unfettered access, as well as on other archives and hundreds of interviews, "Somewhere "is a riveting narrative of a life lived onstage, offstage, and backstage. It is also an accomplished work of criticism and social history that chronicles one man's phenomenal career and places it squarely in the cultural ferment of a time when New York City was truly "a helluva town."

If you didn't experience rock and roll in Minnesota in the 1960s, this book will make you wish you had. This behind-the-scenes, up-close-and-personal account relates how a handful of Minnesota rock bands erupted out of a small Midwest market and made it big. It was a brief, heady moment for the musicians who found themselves on a national stage, enjoying a level of success most bands only dream of. In Everybody's Heard about the Bird, Rick Shefchik writes of that time in vivid detail. Interviews with many of the key musicians, combined with extensive research and a phenomenal cache of rare photographs, reveal how this monumental era of Minnesota rock music evolved. The chronicle begins with musicians from the 1950s and early 1960s, including Augie Garcia, Bobby Vee, the Fendermen, and Mike Waggoner and the Bops. Shefchik looks at how a local recording studio and record label, along with Minnesota radio stations, helped make their achievements possible and prepared the way for later bands to break out nationally. Shefchik delves deeply into the Trashmen's emblematic rise to fame. A Minneapolis band that recorded a fluke novelty hit called "Surfin' Bird" at Kay Bank Studios, the Trashmen signed with Soma Records, topped the local charts in late 1963, and were poised to top the national charts in early 1964. Hundreds of Minnesota bands took inspiration from the Trashmen's success, as teen dances with live bands flourished in clubs, ballrooms, gyms, and halls across the Upper Midwest. Here are the stories of bands like the Gestures, the Castaways, and the Underbeats, and the triumphs-and tragedies-of the most prominent Minnesota-spawned bands of the late 1960s, including Gypsy, Crow, and the Litter. For the baby boomers who remember it and everyone else who has felt its influence, the 1960s rock-and-roll scene in Minnesota was an extraordinary period both in musical history and popular culture, and now it's captured fully in print for the first time. Everybody's Heard about the Bird celebrates how these bands found their singular sound and played for their elated audiences from the golden era to today.

Classical singing training is no longer relevant for the theatre performer today. So how does an actor train his singing voice? Now in its second edition, this practical handbook takes the reader through a step-by-step training programme relevant to the modern singing actor and dancer. A variety of contemporary voice qualities including belting and twang are explained, with exercises for each topic.

From Oklahoma to Carousel, The Sound of Music to The King and I, the sights and sounds of Broadway were dominated by Richard Rodgers for the better part of the twentieth century. Reissued to commemorate the composer's 100th birthday, this is the inside story behind his successes and a look into his influences and the people who encouraged him. The book contains many Broadway and Hollywood anecdotes; passages on the art of lyric writing and composing (with examples from several songs to demonstrate his points); and insights into the troubles and triumphs of collaboration.

Why do so many operas end in suicide, murder, and death? Why do many characters in large-scale operas exhibit neurotic behaviours worthy of psychoanalysis? Why are the legendary "grands operas" so seldom performed today? Anselm Gerhard argues in this text that such questions can only be answered by recognizing that daily life in rapidly urbanized mid-19th-century Paris introduced not just new social forces, but also new modes of perception and expectations of art. He attempts to provide a realistic portrayal of life in a metropolic, librettists and composers of "grand opera" developed new forms and conventions, as well as new staging performance practices. For example, the "tableau", in which the chorus typically plays the role of a destructive mob. These larger urban and social concerns are brought to bear in Gerhard's discussions of eight operas, composed by Rossini, Auber, Meyebeer, Verdi, and Louise Bertin.

Oscar Hammerstein II (1895-1960) forged a remarkable, multifaceted career as a librettist, lyricist, playwright, director, and producer. He wrote "Carmen Jones, Carousel, Show Boat," and, with longtime collaborator Richard Rodgers," Oklahoma!, South Pacific, The King and I," and "The Sound of Music. "Hugh Fordin enjoyed complete access to the Hammerstein archives and conducted numerous interviews with family and colleagues like Rodgers, Berlin, Robbins, and Sondheim. The result is the definitive biography of a creative giant, who changed forever the texture of American theater.

The musical theatre of Stephen Sondheim probes deeply into the most disturbing issues of contemporary life. By challenging his audience with intricate music, biting wit, and profound themes, he flouts the traditional wisdom of the musical theatre. Tracing Sondheim's career from his initial success as lyricist for "West Side Story" and "Gypsy" to his most recent work - "Into the Woods" and "Assassins" - Joanne Gordon emphasizes not only the disturbing content of Sondheim's work, but his innovative use of form. In shows such as "A Little Night Music", "Sweeney Todd", and "Sunday in the Park with George", Sondheim's music and lyrics are inextricably woven into the fabric of the entire work.