Jerry Herman is a composer and lyricist known for making the iconic musicals Hello, Dolly!, Mame. and La Cage aux Folles. Unlike other composers of the era, such as Kander and Ebb, Jerry Herman did not want to concern himself with writing more serious music for musicals. He longed to write music that was similar to that of the Gershwins and similar artists of time before the Golden Age (Ruhlmann). Instead of being controversial or new for the time period, he made sure his music had a more upbeat and happier feeling. Audiences left with his songs stuck in their heads (Ruhlmann).
Milk and Honey opened on Broadway in 1961 and closed after 543 performances as found on his biography on the “allmusic” website (Ruhlmann). Milk and Honey was about Americans who found romance in Israel (Ruhlmann), a very light-hearted story
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Both John Kander and Fred Ebb composed a musical separately on Broadway before they met each other, but neither was successful on his own. After meeting each other in 1962, the duo had their first successful show with Flora, the Red Menace, a political satire, in 1966. It ran for only 87 shows but it did win Liza Minelli, a growing star at the time, a Tony Award for best actress (Ankeney). This musical ended up launching the careers of Kander and Ebb as a duo. They would spend most of their career writing musicals that presented edgy or controversial topics.
In 1967, their next musical endeavor, Cabaret, which explored the racism present in fascism as well as the political manipulation techniques ran for 1,165 performances. Cabaret was a major hit on Broadway, going on to win 8 Tony Awards including the most coveted award, “Best Musical” (Ankeney). They had other musical hits such as Happy Time, and Zorba, both exploring darker themes such as the suicide of the central female character in
...icial production of Porgy and Bess began in 1933 when Heyward and Gershwin signed a contract with The Theatre Guild. Gershwin worked on the opera in both New York and South Carolina, where he went to get a feel for the music there. George Gershwin wrote the music, Dubose Heyward wrote the libretto and also wrote the lyrics with the help of Ira Gershwin. The original production of Porgy and Bess opened on Broadway in the fall of 1935 and ran for 124 performances. Porgy and Bess was not considered a true opera until 1976, there have been several productions since it opened. The most recent Broadway production of Porgy and Bess opened on January 12th, 2012, it starred Audra McDonald as “Bess” and Norm Lewis as “Jake”. It received positive to mixed reviews, Audra was praised for her portrayal of “Bess” and even won a Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical.
The Metamorphosis of Johnny Tremain Johnny Tremain is like a butterfly; he went through a transformation. Johnny Tremain is a book by Esther Forbes about a crippled boy during the American Revolution and the events he endures. Johnny Tremain was a very dynamic character because people and events affected him. People change main characters in many books. Johnny Tremain is no exception.
Stempel, Larry. Showtime: A History of the Broadway Musical Theater. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2010.
George Lopez was born on April 23rd in the year of 1961 in the Mission, Hills of Los Angeles, California. His father who was Anataso was a migrant worker who left his wife, Frieda for a different lifestyle. After Lopez was born, Frieda and George Moved in with his mom’s parents who tried to raise Lopez In her hometown of California. When George was a young kid his mother explained to him that his father had died. Even though, the real truth was that he was in fact alive but wanted nothing to do with his son who he had with his ex-wife. His mother soon remarried when George was only ten years of age. His mouther also left, so he had nowhere to go other than to his grandparents’ house because he figured they would take care of him. Lopez was
On April 12, 2014 at 7:30 pm, I gratefully attended the musical Guys and Dolls at Ouachita Baptist University's auditorium. Directed by Daniel Inouye, this wonderful play is based on the story and characters of Damon Runyan. These stories which were written in the 1920s and 1930s, involved gangsters, gamblers, and other characters from the New York underworld. The premiere of Guys and Dolls on Broadway was in 1950 where it ran 1200 performances and won the Tony Award for Best Musical. The musical had many Broadway revivals and was even turned into a film in 1955.
West Side Story suffered a doubtful early history before it made its first Broadway appearance in 1957. The musical was not appealing to potential investors because it was considered too dark and ugly to be commercially viable; its gritty realism and tragic ending seemed too serious to become mainstream. West Side Story dealt with serious subjects—bigotry, race, rape, murder, and death—in a more direct way than Broadway had seen before. Although it did not initially seem possible, West Side Story successfully synthesizes the large tradition of Broadway with the relevancy of Hispanic immigration and juvenile delinquency of the 1950s.
... John, Fred Ebb, and Greg Lawrence. "Chicago on Broadway." Colored Lights: Forty Years of Words and Music, Show Biz, Collaboration, and All That Jazz. New York: Faber and Faber, 2003. 119-40. Google Books. Web. 1 May 2014.
This fearlessness was something that Broadway idealized, ultimately opening the doors for playwrights and composers to speak their mind by means of the shows they produced. A few leading shows in this field were the musicals Chicago, Pacific Overtures, and A Chorus Line. Each of the three plays tackled their own social injustices all while also embedding individualized views of the glorified American Dream inside their works. Chicago and A Chorus Line take you behind the scenes in the world of Broadway, one tackling the injustices of the media and glorification of crime, and the other puts a light on the “small people” often forgotten in
“The American musical was born long before European operetta crossed the Atlantic. In The American Musical Stage Before 1800. Julian Mates tells us that “America’s early theatres were essentially lyric theatres…In America, no earlier dramatic forms existed, and the musical stage became our only tradition (musicals101.com)”. During America’s first hundred years, the favorite musical entertainments during the time were variety musical shows. In the 1860’s and 70’s, Pantomime was a the main Broadway staple. In these types of shows, clown characters were taken and placed in plots based on Mother Goose stories. Also seen was the insertion of popular songs whenever the audience needed a breather. The Pantomime form disappeared completely from American stages by 1880.
Wells, E A. (2011) West Side Story Cultural Perspectives on an American musical. Maryland: Scarecrow Press, Inc.
Horowitz, Mark Eden. "The Craft Of Making Art: The Creative Processes Of Eight Musical Theatre Songwriters." Studies In Musical Theatre 7.2 (2013): 261-283.Humanities Full Text (H.W. Wilson). Web. 23 Mar. 2014.
This book starts in the pre-revolutionary time. At the beginning of the book, Johnny Tremain, is working as an apprentice to Mr. Lapham. Mr. Lapham is a blacksmith. Johnny’s parents died in a fire several years before, and this is why he lived with the Laphams. He worked there with enthusiasm for several years until he hurt his arm, scolding it in hot metal. After the accident, Mr. Lapham told Johnny that he needs to find a different profession, but he can stay with the laphams.
Within the last few decades we've seen a huge resurgence in the popularity of the musical. With shows like Hamilton, Wicked, and Once, musicals have become more modern, edgy, and overall more accessible to a wide range of patrons of the arts. In this, the movie musical has also seen a regrowth in popularity – with reinventions of classic musicals like Hairspray (2007), Sweeny Todd (2007), and Les Miserables (2012) and original movie musicals like La La Land (2016) and Across the Universe (2007).
The play opened on December 3, 1947 and had instant success. It premiered five years after World War II and it “enfolded all the anxieties of the era in its story of perverse gentility colliding with the earthy truths of the working class.” (Hagopian, 2014) This is also why it went on to be made into a movie in 1951 with the screenplay written by Tennessee Williams and Oscar Saul.
When you look up the definition of a musical it states that it is a “stage, television, or film production utilizing popular-style songs- dialogue optional- to either tell a story or showcase the talents of the writers and or performers”(Kenrick). Just like the Opera you can trace musicals all the way back to Ancient Greece; at this time there was no separation between the Opera and Musicals. As we fast forward to the Middle ages we start to see the development of slapstick comedy and popular songs. In fact it is said that Opera was a descendent of classical theatre. When they started adding music Opera was then created and then there was a fine separation between the