a musical comedy components of a musical come usually known as the score, with sung lines considered a lyrics and a spoken lines the book, or from time to time a libretto (a term besides often applied to text of an opera, it incorporates the words of two dialogue & lyric).

Numbers of familiar musical theater works use at times been a basis for successful musical films, or were adapted for television presentations. When the bit of popular tv show stand placed 1 lone episode in the style of a musical comedy as a play in their common format (examples include episodes of Ally McBeal, ''Buffy the Vampire Slayer's episode Once More with Feeling, or Oz's Variety), or have suddenly begun signing and dancing in a musical-like style during an episode (several episodes of The Simpsons), the television series Cop Rock'', which extensively used the musical format, was not a success.

When musical theater works come performed around the world, it is mayhap virtually all oft produced in Broadway in New York and in the West End in London.

The musical theater may be anywhere from either deuce or three proceedings to many hours; nevertheless, virtually all musical theater come deuce hours to two hours & forty-5 transactions; musical comedy now come generally presented sustaining a single intermission ten to fifteen transactions within length. The musical comedy might unremarkably use about twenty to thirty songs of variable lengths (including reprises and underscoring) interspersed with book (dialogue) scenes. A few musical comedy, all the same, come "sung-through" & don't stand any spoken dialogue. This could blur a line between musical theatre & opera.

The musical theater's moments of greatest spectacular intensity come typically performed inside song. Proverbially, "when the emotion becomes too strong for speech, you sing; when it becomes too strong for song, you dance." a song must exist as crafted to lawsuit a character (or even characters) & their situation inside the story. a indicate normally opens by owning a song that sets the tone of the musical theater, introduces occasionally or even everthing of the major characters, & shows the setting of the play. Inside a compressed nature & severity of a musical comedy, a writers must get a characters and the plot.

Music will bring an first-class way to express emotion. Nevertheless, on the average, fewer words come sung withwithin the 5-microscopic song than come spoken in the 5-microscopic prevent of dialogue. So there exists less period to respond with dramthe than witharound the straight play of tantamount length, since the musical comedy might own an hour & a half or even sir thomas more of music in it.

Musical collaboration

Musical theater/theatre occurs as collaborative craft using an extended history of traditional forms & structures, although freshly writing inside musical comedy is constantly stretching & researching a tremendous flexibility of the artform, ingesting it to antecedently undiscovered pages. Musical theater come virtually all usually recognised to become the combination of sung lyric & spoken dialogue.

The authors
There are normally many authors of the musical comedy. Super couple musical theater come written totally by 1 individual. The collaborative partnership of composer (music), lyricist (lyrics) and bookwriter (script) are typically required, although a single individual might help when composer/lyricist, lyricist/bookwriter (too known as librettist) or bookwriter/composer. There may be multiple bookwriters, lyrist and/or composers in any of these musical theater.

No easily guide to the virtually all frequently-asked wonder all about musical theatre: "Which comes first, the music or the lyric?" To each one collaboration works inside the different way, & tends to become unique to the specific collaborators required. Every now and again the melody inspires the lyric. For instance the lyric inspires the melody. Even so, a strongest inspiration for all the authors is the camping theme of the independent story of the indicate.

the initial idethe for even the newly musical comedy comedy can came from either the authors themselves, or it might exist as commissioned by a producer to write a musical in a specific subject. Musical theatre has an extended tradition of adapting plays, books & more source poop into this fresh genre.

History

In the beginning
the foremost theater piece that conforms to the modern conception of a musical comedy is usually considered to exist as The Black Crook - with book by Charles M. Barras and musical adaptations by Giuseppe Operti - which premiered at Niblo's Gardens in New York on September 12, 1866. the production was the stupefying 5-&-a-half hours yearn, however despite its length saved playgoer mesmerized plenty to run 474 performances.

Operetta
Probably a right-known composers of operetta were W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, whose prolific output - including The Mikado, Pirates of Penzance, and Princess Ida - remains popular to this day, and is often revived by London's D'Oyly Carte company, which is dedicated to presenting their work at the Savoy Theatre. Great deal of their bequest served as an inspiration for the likes of Victor Herbert (Babes in Toyland, 1903), Franz Lehár (The Merry Widow, 1907), and Oskar Straus (The Chocolate Soldier, 1910).

The Roaring Twenties
A musical theater developed from either opera & light opera, however early musical comedy in the Roaring Twenties ignored plot in favor of emphasizing star actors & actresses, large dance routines, & popular songs (throughout a number 1 half of the twentieth century, popular music was dominated by theater writers). Numbers of shows were review using little plot. Average of the days were light-hearted productions rather Lady Be Good, Sunny, Tip Toes, No, No, Nanette, Oh, Kay, and Funny Face. Their books could keep close at hand been forgettable, however it produced enduring standards from either George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Vincent Youmans, and Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, among others.

the number one production to virtually all resemble a musical comedy when you underst& it now - a complete integration of book and score - was Show Boat, which premiered on December 27, 1927 at the Ziegfeld Theater around Future York. As much as this point, Florenz Ziegfeld had been known for his spectacular song-&-dance review featuring extravagant sets & elaborate costumes, however there was there is no most common theme ligature a various figures together. Indicate Boat, using the book & lyrics altered from either Edna Ferber's novel by Oscar Hammerstein II and P. G. Wodehouse and music by Jerome Kern, presented a new concept that was embraced by audiences immediately. Despite the bit of of its startling themes - miscegenation among a two - the original production ran a number of 572 performances.

The Thirties
Bucked up per profits of Indicate Boat, originative teams began as a result a "format" of that popular hit. Of Thee I Sing (1931), a political caustic remark using music by George Gershwin & lyrics by Ira Gershwin and Morrie Ryskind, was a 1st musical theater to exist as awarded the Pulitzer Prize. The Band Wagon (1931), with the score by Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz, starred dancing partners Fred Astaire and his sister Adele. When it wwhen primarily a review, it served as the basis for 2 subsequent film versions that were "book" musical theater in the confessedly feel. Porter's Anything Goes (1934) affirmed Ethel Merman's position as the Number 1 Lady of musical - a title she maintained for several years. Gershwin's Porgy and Bess (1935) wwhen closer to opera than it was to the average musical theater, however a la mode & scope it foreshadowed such contemporary productions as Evita and Les Misérables. The Cradle Will Rock (1937), with the book & score by Marc Blitzstein and directed by Orson Welles, was a extremely political piece that, despite a arguing surrounding it, managed to run 108 performances. Kurt Weill's Knickerbocker Holiday brought to the musical stage Future York City's early history, utilizing when its source writings by Washington Irving. Clearly, musical was evolving into something beyond feathers & beads worn by statuesque chorus girl.

The Golden Age (1940s/1950s/1960s)
A Golden Age of the Broadway musical comedy is typically considered to keep around begun by having Oklahoma! (1943) and to keep close at hand ended by using Hair (1968).

Rodgers' & Hammerstein's Oklahoma! got a cohesive (in case somewhat slim) plot, songs that furthered a action of a story, & featured dream ballets which advanced a plot & developed the characters, like than applying dance as an excuse to parade scantily-clad women through the stage. It defied musical conventions by raising its foremost work curtain nin in a bevy of showgirl, however like on the woman churning butter, sustaining an off-stage voice singing the opening lines of Oh, What a Beautiful Morning. It was a 1st "blockbuster" Broadway indicate, running off a sum of 2,212 performances, & remains one of the virtually all often produced of the team's projects. Them created an extraordinary collection of a select few of musical comedy's right loved & virtually all enduring classics, including Carousel (1945), South Pacific (1949), The King and I (1951), and The Sound of Music (1959).

Americana was a period in a period of the "Golden Age" after a wartime period of shows were beginning to arrive. An case of this would exist as "On The Town" (1944), written by Betty Comden and Adolf Green, composed by Leonard Bernstein and choreographed by Jerome Robbins. the musical comedy is placed inside the period of wartime, in which the class action of iii sailors get on a Two dozen hour shore leave in Just released York. When you took their day, it apiece meet the rattling woman. A women therein indicate have a specific power to the babies, when in case to exist as saying, "Come here! I need a man!" a indicate besides gives a impression of a united states sustaining an uncertain first, when the sailors besides keep close at hand by having their women prior to allowing.

Oklahoma! elysian others to prove my point a trend. Irving Berlin used sharpshooter Annie Oakley's career as a basis for his Annie Get Your Gun (1946, 1,147 performances); Burton Lane, E. Y. Harburg, and Fred Saidy combined political satire with Irish whimsy for their fantasy ''Finian's Rainbow'' (1947, 725 performances); Cole Porter found inspiration in William Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew for Kiss Me, Kate (1948, 1,077 performances); Damon Runyan's eclectic characters were at the core of Frank Loesser's and Abe Burrows' Guys and Dolls, (1950, 1,200 performances); and the Gold Rush was the setting for Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe's Paint Your Wagon (1951).

A fairly brief rerun - 289 performances - of that indicate didn't discourage the babies from either collaborating over again, this period in an adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion - My Fair Lady (1956), with Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews, which at 2,717 performances held the long-dog record for numbers of years.

When inside Oklahoma!, dance was an integral a portion of West Side Story (1957), which transported Romeo and Juliet to modern day Just released York City & converted a feuding Montague & Capulet families into war-ridden gangs, a Sharks & a Jets. A book was adapted by Arthur Laurents, with music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by newcomer Stephen Sondheim. It was embraced per critics however failed to exist as the popular selection for the "blue-haired matinee ladies," world health organization favorite a microscopic town Flow of any stream City, Iowa of Meredith Willson's The Music Man to the alleys of Manhattan's Upper West Side. Apparently Tony Award voters were of a similar mind, since it favorite a latter on top a previous. West Side Story experienced the respectable begin of 732 performances (1,040 in the West Prevent), when A Music Human ran about twice when hanker, by owning 1,375.

Laurents & Sondheim teamed once again for Gypsy (1959, 702 performances), with Jule Styne providing a music for the wing story just about the virtually completely caused stage mother of all-period, stripper Gypsy Rose Lee's mother Rose. the original production run 702 performances, however proved to become a large hit around its trinity subsequent revivals, sustaining Angela Lansbury, Tyne Daly, and Bernadette Peters tackling the role manufactured renowned by Ethel Merman.

Stephen Sondheim would be one of a first composer/lyricists from either 1960 on. His 1st plan for which he wrote two music & lyrics was A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962, 964 performances), with a book according to the works of Plautus by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart, and starring Zero Mostel. Sondheim was non 1 to concentrate on a romanticistic plots average of productions of the instance; his act tended to become darker, looking for the grittier sides of life two present & past. Occasionally of his earliest works come Anyone Can Whistle (1964, which - at a mere nine performances, despite getting star power inside Lee Remick and Angela Lansbury - is a legendary flop), Company (1970), Follies (1971), and A Little Night Music (1973), which featured a simply standard ever to emerge from either the extensive Sondheim catalogue, Send in the Clowns. He has detected inspiration in a virtually all improbable of sources - the opening of Japan to Western trade for Pacific Overtures, a legendary homicidal barber - Sweeney Todd - seeking retaliation in the Industrial Age of London, the paintings of Georges Seurat for Sunday in the Park with George, and a collection of souls out to eliminating the American President in Assassins. His works come usually known for their lyrical sophistication & musical complexness, which several critics argue has led to his works getting super little popularity among a general public.

Jerry Herman, too, has played the important role within Our contries musical comedy, beginning by using his number one Broadway production, Milk and Honey (1961, 563 performances), about a institution of the state of Israel, and continuing by using a smash hits Hello, Dolly! (1964, 2,844 performances), Mame (1966, 1,508 performances), and La Cage aux Folles (1983, 1,761 performances). Possibly his less successful shows prefer Dear World (1969) and Mack & Mabel (1974) have had memorable scores (Mack & Mabel was later reworked into a London hit). Writing two words & music, numerous of Herman's showtunes use at times turn into popular standards, including "Hello, Dolly!", "If He Walked Into My Life", "We Need a Little Christmas", "I Am What I Am", "Mame", "Shalom", "The Best of Times", "Before the Parade Passes By", "Put On Your Sunday Clothes", "It Only Takes a Moment", "It's Today!", "Open a New Window", "Bosom Buddies", "I Won't Send Roses", and "Time Heals Everything", recorded by such luminaries as Louis Armstrong, Eydie Gorme, Barbra Streisand, Petula Clark and Bernadette Peters. Herman's songbook has been a subject of ii popular musical review, ''Jerry's Girls (Broadway, 1985), and Showtune (off-Broadway, 2003). Jerry Herman is to traditional musical theater what Stephen Sondheim is to the avant-garde.

A musical comedy began to vary from either a comparatively narrow confines of the Fifties. Rock music would be utilized around many Broadway musical comedy, maybe a virtually all important of which was Hair, which featured not exclusively rock however as well nudity and controversial opinions about a Vietnam War. More crucial rock musical comedy of the Sixties & Seventies involved Jesus Christ Superstar, Godspell, and Two Gentlemen of Verona. A musical comedy likewise go into more directions. Shows prefer Raisin, Dreamgirls, Purlie, and The Wiz brought a important African-Western influence to Broadway. Other & supplementary different musical style were turned into musical theater either in or even off-Broadway. Self-propelled corporations & more types of corporations hired Broadway talent to write corporate musicals, private shows which were simply seen by their employees.

More recent eras

1976 brought one of the outstanding contemporary musical comedy to the stage. A Chorus Line emerged from recorded group psychotherapy-style sessions Michael Bennett conducted with gypsies - people world health organization sing & dance within trend lines of a leading players - from either the Broadway community. From either hundreds of hours of tapes, James Kirkwood and Nick Dante fashioned the book just about an audition for even a musical theater, incorporating into it several of the real-life stories of people world health organization got sat within on the sessions - & a select few of whom yet played variations of themselves or every more in the indicate. Using music by Marvin Hamlisch and lyrics by Edward Kleban, A Chorus'' number 1 opened at Joseph Papp's Public Theater in lower Manhattan. Advance word-of-mouth - that something extraordinary was astir to explode - boosted pack professional sales, & when critics ran away from superlatives to describe what it found in opening nighttime, what ab initio experienced been planned as a limited engagement sooner or later moved to the Shubert Theater uptown for a redo that seemed to go forever. A indicate swept a Tony Awards & won a Pulitzer Prize, and its hit song, What I personally Did for Love, became an instant standard.

Clearly, Broadway audiences were avid to welcome musical comedy that strayed from either a common style & substance. John Kander and Fred Ebb explored pre-World War II Nazi Germany in Cabaret and Prohibition-era Chicago, which relied on old vaudeville techniques to tell its tale of murder & a media. Pippin, by Stephen Schwartz, was set in the times of Charlemagne. Federico Fellini's autobiographical film 8½ became Maury Yeston's Nine. However old-antique values were embraced, too, inside such hits when Annie, 42nd Street, My One and Only, and popular revivals of There are There are no, No, Nanette & Irene.

A Eighties & Nineties saw a influence of European "mega-musicals" or even "pop operas," which usually featured the pop-influenced score & got big casts & sets & were identified when much by their notable results - the falling pendant, the chopper landing in stage - as it were by anything else in the production. Numbers of were according to novels or even more works of literature. A first writers of mega-musicals include a French team of Claude-Michel Schoenberg and Alain Boublil, responsible for Les Misérables and Miss Saigon (inspired by Madame Butterfly); and a British composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, who wrote Evita, based on a life of Argentina's Eva Perón, Cats, derived from a verse form of T. S. Eliot, The Phantom of the Opera, and Sunset Boulevard (from the classic film of the same name). These decades too saw a influence of big corporations that produced musical theater. A first has been Disney, which adapted some of their alive motion-picture show musicals - like Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King (which is said to have been responsible the revivification of 42nd Street between Broadway & Eighth Avenue, antecedently the strip of tourer trap souvenir shops, arcades, peep shows, & smut theaters) for the stage - & likewise created original stage productions such as Aida with music by Elton John.

A growing shell (& prices) of musical theater led to occasionally concern that musical comedy were eschewing substance pro style. A Nineties & 2000s use at times seen several writers produce little musical comedy (Falsettoland, Passion); a topics change widely & the music ranges from either Sondheimesque to pop, however it usually come produced off-Broadway & feature tremendously little casts (& so tremendously moo costs).

There as well got been the concern that a musical comedy comedy experienced misused touch sustaining a tastes of a general public within America & that the musical was progressively doomed to become something viewed by a little & little audience. One of the first writers world health organization attempted to increase a popularity of musical comedy among a immature audience was Jonathan Larson, whose musical Rent (based on the opera La Bohème) featured a cast of twentysomethings & whose score was heavy rock-influenced. the musical theater would exist as a smash profits, however its composer died of an aortic aneurysm prior to he can ever view it email Broadway. More writers world health organization use at times attempted to bring the taste of modern rock to the stage include Jason Robert Brown. An additional trend has been to produce the plot to healthy the collection of songs that own already been hits - so Mamma Mia! (featuring songs by ABBA), ''Movin' Out (based on a tunes of Billy Joel), Good Vibrations (the Beach Boys), and All Shook Up'' (Elvis Presley).

Familiarity will breed contempt - however it's too embraced by producers anxious to assure it recover their super considerable investments, in case does'nt indicate the hardy profits. A select few come uncoerced to choose strike the freshly & unusual, like Avenue Q (which utilizes puppets to tell its super adult-themed story) or even Bombay Dreams (about a "Bollywood" musical comedy churned out by Indian cinema). However a majority prefer to hedge their bets by sticking by having a familiar - revivals of personal fare like Wonderful Town or Fiddler on the Roof or proven hits such as La Cage aux Folles. Now's composers come choosing their sources within already proved poop - cult films rather The Producers or Hairspray; classic literature such as Little Women and Dracula - hoping they'll have a built-integral audience following.

At a present instance (late 2004), the musical theater is existence pulled within the total of different directions. Never to return come the times once the resole producer - a David Merrick or a Cameron Mackintosh - backs a production. Corporate sponsors dominate Broadway, & typically alliances come formed to stage musical theater which necessitate an investment of $10 million or even thomas more. Inside 2002, the credits for Thoroughly Modern Millie listed ten producers, & among victims list were suspire comprised of many people. Usually, off-Broadway & regional theaters tend to create little & so less expensive musical comedy, & within recent days additional & further development of newly musical comedy has taken place outside of Just released York. Wicked, for example, number 1 opened within San Francisco, and its creative team relied on the mostly mediocre reviews to assist the children around retooling the indicate prior to it reached Broadway, in which it in the end became a fit hit.

Famous composers/writers
Lee Adams - Lynn Ahrens - Maxwell Anderson - Harold Arlen - Howard Ashman - Burt Bacharach - Lionel Bart - Irving Berlin - Leonard Bernstein - Marc Blitzstein - Jerry Bock - Alain Boublil - Leslie Bricusse - Mel Brooks - Jason Robert Brown - Sammy Cahn - Petula Clark - George M Cohan - Cy Coleman - Betty Comden - Marc Connelly - Noel Coward - Gretchen Cryer - Micki Grant - Fred Ebb - Ben Elton - Edna Ferber - Dorothy Fields - William Finn - Stephen Flaherty - George Forrest - Noel Gay - George Gershwin - Ira Gershwin - Ricky Ian Gordon - Adolph Green - Adam Guettel - Marvin Hamlisch - Oscar Hammerstein II - Otto Harbach - E. Y. Harburg - Sheldon Harnick - Lorenz Hart - Moss Hart - Jerry Herman - Elton John - Tom Jones - John Kander - George S. Kaufman - Jerome Kern - Saxon Kling - Michael Kunze - Michael John LaChiusa - Burton Lane - Jonathan Larson - Carolyn Leigh - Mitch Leigh - Alan Jay Lerner - Andrew Lippa - Andrew Lloyd Webber - Frank Loesser - Frederic Loewe - Robert Lopez - Galt MacDermot - Jeff Marx - Johnny Mercer - Lionel Monckton - Anthony Newley - Ivor Novello - Richard O'Brien - Cole Porter - Tim Rice - Mary Rodgers - Richard Rodgers - Sigmund Romberg - Harold Rome - Willy Russell - Carole Bayer Sager - Claude-Michel Schönberg - Harvey Schmidt - Stephen Schwartz - Julian Slade - Stephen Sondheim - Charles Strouse - Leslie Stuart - Jule Styne - Harry Tierney - Kurt Weill - Frank Wildhorn - Meredith Willson - Sandy Wilson - P. G. Wodehouse - Robert Wright - Vincent Youmans

Famous choreographers
George Balanchine - Michael Bennett - Gower Champion - Agnes de Mille - Ron Field - Bob Fosse - Peter Gennaro - Michael Kidd - Jerry Mitchell - Susan Stroman - Tommy Tune - Jerome Robbins - Onna White

Famous performers
Julie Andrews - Beatrice Arthur - Lucie Arnaz - Fred and Adele Astaire - Lauren Bacall - Pearl Bailey - Lucille Ball - Michael Ball - John Barrowman - Gene Barry - Steve Barton - Gary Beach - Herschel Bernardi - Theodore Bikel - Kelly Bishop - Vivian Blaine - Ray Bolger - Sarah Brightman - Matthew Broderick - Yul Brynner - Jack Buchanan - Carol Burnett - Betty Buckley - Richard Burton - Kerry Butler - Norbert Leo Butz - Liz Callaway - Len Cariou - Carolee Carmello - Nell Carter - Richard Chamberlain - Carol Channing - Kristin Chenoweth - Petula Clark - Glenn Close - George M. Cohan - Barbara Cook - Michael Crawford - John Cullum - Jim Dale - Yvonne DeCarlo - Tyne Daly - Alfred Drake - Linda Eder - Hunter Foster - Sutton Foster - Helen Gallagher - Malcolm Gets - Robert Goulet - Joel Grey - Barbara Harris - Rex Harrison - Heather Headley - George Hearn - Ruthie Henshall - Jennifer Holliday - Linda Hopkins - Dee Hoty - Ken Howard - Madeline Kahn - Lainie Kazan - Ruby Keeler - Gene Kelly - Larry Kert - Robert Klein - Kevin Kline - Jane Krakowski - Judy Kuhn - Nathan Lane - Angela Lansbury - Carol Lawrence - Gertrude Lawrence - Michelle Lee - Norm Lewis - Priscilla Lopez - Patti LuPone - Robert LuPone - Mary Martin - Millicent Martin - Jessie Matthews - Marin Mazzie - Andrea McArdle - Audra McDonald - Howard McGillin - Donna McKechnie - Idina Menzel - Ethel Merman - Liza Minnelli - Brian Stokes Mitchell - Melba Moore - Robert Morse - Zero Mostel - Donna Murphy - Bebe Neuwirth - Christiane Noll - Jill O'Hara - Jerry Orbach - Elaine Paige - Sarah Jessica Parker - Adam Pascal - Bernadette Peters - Robert Preston - Faith Prince - Jonathan Pryce - John Raitt - Sheryl Lee Ralph - Anthony Rapp - Charles Nelson Reilly - Debbie Reynolds - Alice Ripley - Chita Rivera - Patricia Routledge - Daphne Rubin-Vega - Lea Salonga - Phil Silvers - Emily Skinner - Barbra Streisand - Elaine Stritch - Tommy Tune - Leslie Uggams - Gwen Verdon - Ben Vereen - Anthony Warlow - Colm Wilkinson