Download or read book Echoes of the Holocaust on the American Musical Stage written by Jessica Hillman and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2012-10-29 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With chapters on The Sound of Music, Milk and Honey, Fiddler on the Roof, Cabaret, The Rothschilds, Rags, Ragtime and The Producers, this book examines both direct and indirect references to, or resonances of, the Holocaust, tracing changing American attitudes through the chronological progression of these musical productions and their subsequent revivals. Despite the abundance of writing on both musical theatre history and on the difficulties of Holocaust representation, history and theatre scholars alike have thus far ignored the intersections of these areas. The academy thereby risks excluding precisely those works that shed the most light on our culture's evolving response to the Shoah, an event that still helps to define American identity. This book redresses this lapse by focusing on the theatrical form seen by the greatest amount of people--musicals--which either trigger or reflect changing American mores.
Download or read book America s Musical Stage written by Julian Mates and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 1987-08-14 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "[This book is] a comprehensive illustrated history of the U.S. musical from its colonial origins to the present, tracing the connections and influences of the minstrel show, operetta, burlesque, melodrama, revues, circus, dance, musical comedy, the Broadway opera, the book musical and other forms. . . . Further, Mates introduces readers to inside stuff--the various types of musical performers." Variety Mates shows the musical stage in all its guises--from burlesque to musical comedy to grand opera--from its beginnings in pre-Revolutionary America to the present day. He deals sensitively with the recurrent aesthetic question of popular versus highbrow art and also looks at critical reactions to popular theatrical forms of musical entertainment. He introduces the reader to various types of theatrical companies, the changing repertory, and the many kinds of musical performers who have animated the stage. Mates focuses on the creative relationships between the different forms of opera, the minstrel show and circus, melodrama and dance, burlesque, revue, vaudeville, and musical comedy.
Download or read book A History of the American Musical Theatre written by Nathan Hurwitz and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-27 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the diverse proto-theatres of the mid-1800s, though the revues of the ‘20s, the ‘true musicals’ of the ‘40s, the politicisation of the ‘60s and the ‘mega-musicals’ of the ‘80s, every era in American musical theatre reflected a unique set of socio-cultural factors. Nathan Hurwitz uses these factors to explain the output of each decade in turn, showing how the most popular productions spoke directly to the audiences of the time. He explores the function of musical theatre as commerce, tying each big success to the social and economic realities in which it flourished. This study spans from the earliest spectacles and minstrel shows to contemporary musicals such as Avenue Q and Spiderman. It traces the trends of this most commercial of art forms from the perspective of its audiences, explaining how staying in touch with writers and producers strove to stay in touch with these changing moods. Each chapter deals with a specific decade, introducing the main players, the key productions and the major developments in musical theatre during that period.
Download or read book Broadway written by Laurence Maslon and published by Applause Theatre & Cinema. This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: (Applause Books). A companion to the six-part PBS documentary series, Broadway: The American Musical is the first comprehensive history of the musical, from its roots at the turn of the 20th century through the smashing successes of the new millennium. The in-depth text is lavishly illustrated with a treasure trove of photographs, sheet-music covers, posters, scenic renderings, production stills, rehearsal shots and caricatures, many previously unpublished. Revised and updated, with a brand-new foreword by Julie Andrews and new material on all the Broadway musicals through the 2009-2010 season.
Download or read book The American Musical and the Formation of National Identity written by Raymond Knapp and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American musical has achieved and maintained relevance to more people in America than any other performance-based art. This thoughtful history of the genre, intended for readers of all stripes, offers probing discussions of how American musicals, especially through their musical numbers, advance themes related to American national identity. Written by a musicologist and supported by a wealth of illustrative audio examples (on the book's website), the book examines key historical antecedents to the musical, including the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, nineteenth and early twentieth-century American burlesque and vaudeville, Tin Pan Alley, and other song types. It then proceeds thematically, focusing primarily on fifteen mainstream shows from the twentieth century, with discussions of such notable productions as Show Boat (1927), Porgy and Bess (1935), Oklahoma! (1943), West Side Story (1957), Hair (1967), Pacific Overtures (1976), and Assassins (1991). The shows are grouped according to their treatment of themes that include defining America, mythologies, counter-mythologies, race and ethnicity, dealing with World War II, and exoticism. Each chapter concludes with a brief consideration of available scholarship on related subjects; an extensive appendix provides information on each show discussed, including plot summaries and song lists, and a listing of important films, videos, audio recordings, published scores, and libretti associated with each musical.
Download or read book Irving Berlin s American Musical Theater written by Jeffrey Magee and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-04-06 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From patriotic "God Bless America" to wistful "White Christmas," Irving Berlin's songs have long accompanied Americans as they fall in love, go to war, and come home for the holidays. Irving Berlin's American Musical Theater is the first book to fully consider this songwriter's immeasurable influence on the American stage. Award-winning music historian Jeffrey Magee chronicles Berlin's legendary theatrical career, providing a rich background to some of the great composer's most enduring songs, from "There's No Business Like Show Business" to "Puttin' on the Ritz." Magee shows how Berlin's early experience singing for pennies made an impression on the young man, who kept hold of that sensibility throughout his career and transformed it into one of the defining attributes of Broadway shows. Magee also looks at darker aspects of Berlin's life, examining the anti-Semitism that Berlin faced and his struggle with depression. Informative, provocative, and full of colorful details, this book will delight song and theater aficionados alike as well as anyone interested in the story of a man whose life and work expressed so well the American dream.
Download or read book The American Musical written by Peter Riddle and published by Oakville, Ont. : Mosaic Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book traces the origins of music theatre from its 18th century European roots through its transformation in 19th century America, and its relation to American popular forms of entertainment as the minstrel show, burlesque and the revue. The flowering of the true musical comedy is documented, as represented by the Princess Musical of Jerome Kern and P G Wodehouse, which then gave birth to the first enduring masterpieces of American music drama -- Kern and Hammerstein's 'Show Boat'. Includes section on Stephen Sondheim, Andrew Lloyd Webber and the development of music theatre through the sixties and beyond.
Download or read book Making Americans written by Andrea Most and published by Belknap Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From 1925 to 1951--three chaotic decades of depression, war, and social upheaval--Jewish writers brought to the musical stage a powerfully appealing vision of America fashioned through song and dance. It was an optimistic, meritocratic, selectively inclusive America in which Jews could at once lose and find themselves--assimilation enacted onstage and off, as Andrea Most shows. This book examines two interwoven narratives crucial to an understanding of twentieth-century American culture: the stories of Jewish acculturation and of the development of the American musical. Here we delve into the work of the most influential artists of the genre during the years surrounding World War II--Irving Berlin, Eddie Cantor, Dorothy and Herbert Fields, George and Ira Gershwin, Oscar Hammerstein, Lorenz Hart, and Richard Rodgers--and encounter new interpretations of classics such as The Jazz Singer, Whoopee, Girl Crazy, Babes in Arms, Oklahoma!, Annie Get Your Gun, South Pacific, and The King and I. Most's analysis reveals how these brilliant composers, librettists, and performers transformed the experience of New York Jews into the grand, even sacred acts of being American. Read in the context of memoirs, correspondence, production designs, photographs, and newspaper clippings, the Broadway musical clearly emerges as a form by which Jewish artists negotiated their entrance into secular American society. In this book we see how the communities these musicals invented and the anthems they popularized constructed a vision of America that fostered self-understanding as the nation became a global power.
Download or read book The Musical written by Richard Kislan and published by Hal Leonard Corporation. This book was released on 1995 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: (Applause Books). This revised and expanded edition of Kislan's acclaimed study of America's musical theater includes a new section on "Recent Musical Theater: Issues and Problems." "The ancient union of drama and song, known as musical theater, comes in many forms vaudeville, burlesque, comic opera, minstrels, etc. The author reviews these and other highlights of American musicals ... with a fascinating background on the elements that contribute to the success of a Showboat ." King Features * "Worth study by anyone who still thinks that the musical is a collection of songs." The Stage
Download or read book The Secret Life of the American Musical written by Jack Viertel and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2016-03-01 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Bestseller For almost a century, Americans have been losing their hearts and losing their minds in an insatiable love affair with the American musical. It often begins in childhood in a darkened theater, grows into something more serious for high school actors, and reaches its passionate zenith when it comes time for love, marriage, and children, who will start the cycle all over again. Americans love musicals. Americans invented musicals. Americans perfected musicals. But what, exactly, is a musical? In The Secret Life of the American Musical, Jack Viertel takes them apart, puts them back together, sings their praises, marvels at their unflagging inventiveness, and occasionally despairs over their more embarrassing shortcomings. In the process, he invites us to fall in love all over again by showing us how musicals happen, what makes them work, how they captivate audiences, and how one landmark show leads to the next—by design or by accident, by emulation or by rebellion—from Oklahoma! to Hamilton and onward. Structured like a musical, The Secret Life of the American Musical begins with an overture and concludes with a curtain call, with stops in between for “I Want” songs, “conditional” love songs, production numbers, star turns, and finales. The ultimate insider, Viertel has spent three decades on Broadway, working on dozens of shows old and new as a conceiver, producer, dramaturg, and general creative force; he has his own unique way of looking at the process and at the people who collaborate to make musicals a reality. He shows us patterns in the architecture of classic shows and charts the inevitable evolution that has taken place in musical theater as America itself has evolved socially and politically. The Secret Life of the American Musical makes you feel as though you’ve been there in the rehearsal room, in the front row of the theater, and in the working offices of theater owners and producers as they pursue their own love affair with that rare and elusive beast—the Broadway hit.
Download or read book The Golden Age of American Musical Theatre written by Corinne J. Naden and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2011-02-01 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Golden Age of American Musical Theatre provides synopses, cast and production credits, song titles, and other pertinent information for over 180 musicals from Oklahoma! to On A Clear Day You Can See Forever. Concentrating on a 22-year span, this book lists both commercial successes and flops of the Golden Age-when the musicals presented on Broadway showcased timeless, memorable tunes, sophisticated comedy, and the genius of creative artists like Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein, Jerome Robbins, Leonard Bernstein, George Abbott, Moss Hart, Angela Lansbury, Robert Preston, and many others.
Download or read book American Musical Theatre written by Gerald Martin Bordman and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 1033 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hailed as "absolutely the best reference book on its subject" by Newsweek, American Musical Theatre: A Chronicle covers more than 250 years of musical theatre in the United States, from a 1735 South Carolina production of Flora, or Hob in the Well to The Addams Family in 2010. Authors Gerald Bordman and Richard Norton write an engaging narrative blending history, critical analysis, and lively description to illustrate the transformation of American musical theatre through such incarnations as the ballad opera, revue, Golden Age musical, rock musical, Disney musical, and, with 2010's American Idiot, even the punk musical. The Chronicle is arranged chronologically and is fully indexed according to names of shows, songs, and people involved, for easy searching and browsing. Chapters range from the "Prologue," which traces the origins of American musical theater to 1866, through several "intermissions" (for instance, "Broadway's Response to the Swing Era, 1937-1942") and up to "Act Seven," the theatre of the twenty-first century. This last chapter covers the dramatic changes in musical theatre since the last edition published-whereas Fosse, a choreography-heavy revue, won the 1999 Tony for Best Musical, the 2008 award went to In the Heights, which combines hip-hop, rap, meringue and salsa unlike any musical before it. Other groundbreaking and/or box-office-breaking shows covered for the first time include Avenue Q, The Producers, Billy Elliot, Jersey Boys, Monty Python's Spamalot, Wicked, Hairspray, Urinetown the Musical, and Spring Awakening. Discussion of these shows incorporates plot synopses, names of principal players, descriptions of scenery and costumes, and critical reactions. In addition, short biographies interspersed throughout the text colorfully depict the creative minds that shaped the most influential musicals. Collectively, these elements create the most comprehensive, authoritative history of musical theatre in this country and make this an essential resource for students, scholars, performers, dramaturges, and musical enthusiasts.
Download or read book Anything Goes written by Ethan Mordden and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-10 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers a history of American musical theater from the 1920s through to the 1970s, and includes such famous works as "Oklahoma!," "The Red Mill," and "Porgy and Bess."
Download or read book Harold Prince and the American Musical Theater written by Foster Hirsch and published by CUP Archive. This book was released on 1989-04-06 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A complete look at the career of one of Broadway's most influential producer/directors. The elements of Prince's signature--his convention-challenging subject matter and use of music, the revitalizing theatricality of his production designs--are discussed in detail. Illustrated with photos from the hit shows which show his innovative concepts in decor and state movement.
Download or read book Our Musicals Ourselves written by John Bush Jones and published by Brandeis University Press. This book was released on 2011-04-17 with total page 650 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our Musicals, Ourselves is the first full-scale social history of the American musical theater from the imported Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas of the late nineteenth century to such recent musicals as The Producers and Urinetown. While many aficionados of the Broadway musical associate it with wonderful, diversionary shows like The Music Man or My Fair Lady, John Bush Jones instead selects musicals for their social relevance and the extent to which they engage, directly or metaphorically, contemporary politics and culture. Organized chronologically, with some liberties taken to keep together similarly themed musicals, Jones examines dozens of Broadway shows from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present that demonstrate numerous links between what played on Broadway and what played on newspapersÕ front pages across our nation. He reviews the productions, lyrics, staging, and casts from the lesser-known early musicals (the ÒgunboatÓ musicals of the Teddy Roosevelt era and the ÒCinderella showsÓ and Òleisure time musicalsÓ of the 1920s) and continues his analysis with better-known shows including Showboat, Porgy and Bess, Oklahoma, South Pacific, West Side Story, Cabaret, Hair, Company, A Chorus Line, and many others. While most examinations of the American musical focus on specific shows or emphasize the development of the musical as an art form, JonesÕs book uses musicals as a way of illuminating broader social and cultural themes of the times. With six appendixes detailing the long-running diversionary musicals and a foreword by Sheldon Harnick, the lyricist of Fiddler on the Roof, JonesÕs comprehensive social history will appeal to both students and fans of Broadway.
Download or read book The American Musical written by Marc Bauch and published by Tectum Verlag DE. This book was released on 2003 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although almost neglected in research and studies on American Literature, the American Musical is certainly the most interesting and the most popular genre of American theater and drama. It has been influenced by the necessities of a self-funding commercial theater system of a democratic country. The fact that it has developed in a country of democracy means that it should be a genre for everyone: the intellectual and the common man. Broadway has provided all these. In his study, Marc Bauch analyzes three American Musicals, namely South Pacific (1949) by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, West Side Story (1957) by Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Laurents and Stephen Sondheim as well as Sunday in the Park with George (1984) by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine. Special attention is paid to the themes and topics, the literary means and the dramatic dodges of the aforementioned American Musicals. The three analyses are extended with historical overviews of the American Musical. Marc Bauch is also the author of Themes and Topics of the American Musical after World War II (2001) also published by Tectum Verlag.
Download or read book The American Musical Theater written by Lehman Engel and published by . This book was released on 1967 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This 1967 book provides a critical history of 20th century musicals in the United States.
