Musical Theatre: A History
When I was a teenager, aging theatre buffs insisted that the Broadway musical's "golden age" ended in the 1950s. Recent books and documentaries speak of that era extending into the mid-1960s, and an upcoming generation of writers is pushing that "Golden Age" into the 1970s. Within a decade, someone will push it further, always pretending that the really good stuff happened about thirty years ago. Theatre is very much an art form of the now, here one moment and gone the next, so it is no...
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When I was a teenager, aging theatre buffs insisted that the Broadway musical's "golden age" ended in the 1950s. Recent books and documentaries speak of that era extending into the mid-1960s, and an upcoming generation of writers is pushing that "Golden Age" into the 1970s. Within a decade, someone will push it further, always pretending that the really good stuff happened about thirty years ago. Theatre is very much an art form of the now, here one moment and gone the next, so it is no surprise that many fans and professionals seem to think that the only theatrical events of any importance are those that have occurred within their theatre-going lifetime. Musical Theatre: A History is an attempt to sidestep this trend. The fact is that musical theatre has enjoyed several golden ages, stretching back more than two thousand years to well before the time of Christ. Those golden ages are not relegated to the distant past, and the odds are that more are to come - why, a new one may be starting already.
Acknowledgments 9Introduction "Let's Start at the Very Beginning..." 111 Ancient Times to 1850 - "Playgoers, I Bid You Welcome!" 182 Continental Operetta (1840-1900) - "Typical of France" 353 American Explorations (1624-1880) - "The Music of Something Beginning" 504 Gilbert and Sullivan (1880-1900) - "Object All Sublime" 755 The Birth of Musical Comedy (1880-1899) - "It Belong'd to My Father Before I Was Born" 956 A New Century (1900-1913) - "Whisper of How I'm Yearning" 1117 American Ascendance (1914-1919) - "In a Class Beyond Compare" 1348 Al Jolson - "The World's Greatest Entertainer" 1569 The Jazz Age (1920-1929) - "I Want to Be Happy" 16810 Depression Era Miracles (1930-1940) - "Trouble's Just a Bubble" 20711 A New Beginning (1940-1950) - "They Couldn't Pick a Better Time" 23812 Broadway Takes Stage (1950-1963) - "The Street Where You Live" 26513 Rock Rolls In (1960-1970) - "Soon It's Gonna Rain" 29814 New Directions (1970-1979) - "Vary My Days" 31815 Spectacles and Boardrooms - "As If We Never Said Goodbye" 34216 Musical Comedy Returns (The 2000s) - "Where Did We Go Right?" 370Suggested Reading: An Annotated Bibliography 383Recommended Web Resources 394Index 395
