Musical
theatre is a form of theatre combining music, songs, spoken dialogue and dance.
The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as
the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and
technical aspects of the entertainment as an integrated whole.
Musical theatre works, usually referred to as "musicals", are performed around
the world. They may be presented in large venues, such as big budget West End
and Broadway theatre productions in London and New York City, or in smaller
Off-Broadway or regional productions, on tour, or by amateur groups in schools,
theatres and other performance spaces. In addition to Britain and the U.S.,
there are vibrant musical theatre scenes in Germany, Austria, Philippines,
France, Canada, Japan, Eastern Europe, Australia, and other countries.
The three main components of a musical are the music, the lyrics, and the book.
The book of a musical refers to the "play" or story of the show – in effect its
spoken (not sung) lines; however, "book" can also refer to the dialogue and
lyrics together, which are sometimes referred to (as in opera) as the libretto
(Italian for “little book”). The music and lyrics together form the score of
the musical. The interpretation of the musical by the creative team heavily
influences the way that the musical is presented. The creative team includes a
director, a musical director and usually a choreographer. A musicals production
is also creatively characterized by technical aspects, such as set, costumes,
stage properties, lighting, etc. that generally change from production to
production (although some famous production aspects tend to be retained from
the original production, for example, Bob Fosse's choregraphy in Chicago).
There is no fixed length for a musical, and it can range from a short one-act
entertainment to several acts and several hours in length (or even a
multi-evening presentation); however, most musicals range from one and a half
hours to three hours. Musicals today are typically presented in two acts, with
one intermission ten to 20 minutes in length. The first act is almost always
somewhat longer than the second act, and generally introduces most of the
music. A musical may be built around 4-6 main theme tunes that are reprised
throughout the show, or consist of a series of songs not directly musically
related. Spoken dialogue is generally interspersed between musical numbers,
although the use of "sung dialogue" or recitative is not unknown, especially in
so-called "sung-through" musicals such as Les Miserables.
The musical became a blockbuster filmMusical theatre is closely related to
another theatrical performance art, opera. These forms are usually
distinguished by weighing a number of factors. Musicals generally have a
greater focus on spoken dialogue (though some musicals are entirely accompanied
and sung through, such as Jesus Christ Superstar and Les Miserables; and on the
other hand some operas, such as Die Zauberflöte, and most operettas, have some
unaccompanied dialogue), on dancing (particularly by the principal performers
as well as the chorus), on the use of various genres of popular music (or at
least popular singing styles), and on the avoidance of certain operatic
conventions. In particular, a musical is almost never performed in any but the
language of its audience. Musicals produced in London or New York, for
instance, are invariably sung in English, even if they were originally written
in another language (again, Les Miserables, originally written in French, is a
good example). While an opera singer is primarily a singer and only secondarily
an actor, a musical theatre singer is usually an actor first, who can at least
hold a tune and "put over" a song, but is often not a professional singer as
such. Composers of music for musicals often have to take the limitations of
such performers into account, and theatres staging musicals generally use
amplification of the actors' singing voices in a way that would normally be
disapproved of in an operatic context.
In isolation, at least, none of these features is truly "defining", and in
practice it is often difficult to distinguish among the various kinds of light
musical theatre, including "operetta", "comic opera", "light opera", "musical
play", "musical comedy", "burlesque", "travesty", "music hall", and even
"revue". Some works (e.g. by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim) have
received both "musical theatre" and "operatic" treatment. Similarly, some older
operettas or light operas have had modern productions or adaptations that
treated them as musicals. Sondheim said: I really think that when something
plays Broadway it's a musical, and when it plays in an opera house it's opera.
That's it. It's the terrain, the countryside, the expectations of the audience
that make it one thing or another. This article primarily concerns musical
theatre works that are distinctively "non-operatic", but there inescapably
remains some overlap between lighter operatic forms and the more musically
complex or ambitious musicals: a grey area, in which production styles are
almost as important as actual musical or dramatic content in defining into
which art form the piece falls.
Broadway's longest-running revival also became a hit filmAs with a well-crafted
operetta or opera, a "book" musical's moments of greatest dramatic intensity
are often performed in song. Proverbially, "when the emotion becomes too strong
for speech (or recitative) you sing; when it becomes too strong for song, you
dance." A song is (ideally at any rate) crafted to suit the character (or
characters) and their situation within the story; although there have been
times in the history of the musical (e.g. the 1920s) when this integration
between music and story has been tenuous.
A show often opens with a song that sets the tone of the musical, introduces
some or all of the major characters, and shows the setting of the play. Within
the compressed nature of the musical, the writers must develop the characters
and the plot. Music provides a means to express emotion. However, typically,
many fewer words are sung in a five-minute song than are spoken in a
five-minute block of dialogue. Therefore there is less time to develop drama
than in a straight play of equivalent length, since a musical usually devotes
more time to music than to dialogue.
Many familiar musical theatre works have been the basis for popular musical
films, such as The Sound of Music, West Side Story, and My Fair Lady or were
adapted or even written for television presentations (for example Rodgers and
Hammerstein's Cinderella). Recently, some popular television programs have set
an episode in the style of a musical. There has also been a recent revival of
the movie musical, such as the 2002 film, Chicago. Similarly, India produces
numerous musical films, referred to as "Bollywood" musicals, and Japan produces
a considerable number of Anime musicals. Conversely, there has been a trend in
recent decades to adapt musicals from the screen to the stage, both from
popular animated film musicals, such as Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King,
and live-action films, such as The Producers and The Color Purple.
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