PRESENTATION OUTLINE
HISTORY OF MUSICAL THEATRE
- originated in Ancient Greece
- Included music and dance
- were generally short comedies or tragedies
- Romans continued the tradition and added tap shoes to make their dance more audible
- Middle Age musicals consisted of traveller offering short slapstick comedy etc.
- During the Renaissance period, Italian masked theatre became popular.
- Evolved into court masques during the Tudor period
- Musical opera evolved from masques and was popular until 1680s
- Comic operas and ballad operas because popular in the 18th century
- Music halls, melodrama, burlesque, vaudeville and operette also developed during the 18th century.
- Operette was introduced by the French composer Herve in 1850
- Gilbert and Sullivan were the first authors in Britain to write musical stage works (1871 to 1896)
- Gilbert wrote the lyrics/script and Sullivan wrote complimentary music
- Meanwhile in America, Edward Harrison and Tony Hart worked alongside David Braham and musicals began to evolve into modern musicals
- they wrote musicals based on the lower and middle classes so the audience could relate.
- Included comics, chorus girls and acrobats as variety
- Broadway was introduced in 1866.
- Victor Herbert ,an Irish born cellist and composer, gave musicals the distinctive style that we know today
- Concept musicals emerged in the 1960s.
- They aretypically musicals which put significance on the statement rather than the narrative
- By the 1980s the big staged musicals were becoming more fashionable
-French musical Les Miserables, Miss Saigon and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera (1986) were introduced.
Who were the first authors in Britain to write musical stage works?
When was broadway introduced?
What are concept musicals?
