Forms of Musical

A Potted History of the Musical

Humans need stories. All societies have them and the ability to communicate a narrative is one of the defining characteristics of a human being. Ever since the Greeks got together in groups to act out a narrative, music has played a fundamental role in theatre. The earliest Greek theatre had a singing (and, sometimes, dancing) chorus, as did the theatre of the ancient Romans, who attachedsabilla, a kind of metal clip, to their stage footwear in order to make their footsteps more audible and thereby created the first tap shoes. The mystery plays and travelling players of the Middle Ages all interpolated music and dance, and by the Renaissance these earlier forms of theatre had developed intoCommedia dell’Arte, which went on to develop into comedies and opera buffa, an Italian form of comic opera.

In England, Elizabethan and Jacobean plays often included music and dance, and Shakespeare’s comedies nearly all end in a dance or song. During this time, court masques – elaborate presentations of singing, dancing, elaborate costume, and special scenic effects – became very popular among European royalty and aristocracy, and Shakespeare frequently included masque-like scenes in his plays, such as the Act Four sequence ofThe Tempest.

In Britain during the 1600s, the masques began to develop into a form of English opera, which survives most successfully in the work of Henry Purcell. After the death of Charles II, opera began to fall out of favour in Britain, but the eighteenth century saw hugely successful ballad operas, most notablyThe Beggar’s Opera, which held the record for the longest-running show when in 1782 it ran for sixty-two consecutive performances (about three months). Its author, John Gay, wrote new lyrics to popular tunes of the day, and became the first musical writer to ensure that his audience hummed the songs on the wayinto the theatre, as well as on the way out.

Whilst Colonial America didn’t have any significant theatre until 1752, after Independence, New York began to develop as a centre for the performing arts in the newly United States, as European operas, operetta, ballad operas and music halls began to find an audience amongst the European immigrants who wanted to be reminded of home.

The show generally credited as being the first ‘musical comedy’ isThe Black Crook of 1866. This show largely came about through a series of catastrophes: the theatre Nibblo’s Garden was committed to producingThe Black Crook, a reworking of the Faust legend (by Charles M. Barras) when a Parisian ballet troupe was stranded in New York with nowhere to perform as the theatre they were booked in to had burned down. The manager of Nibblo’s invited the ballet troupe to perform excerpts of their show during performances of the Faust play and the resulting mishmash became an unexpected smash hit, the first show to run more than a year in New York. Not surprisingly, the writer ofThe Black Crook claimed that the production had made a travesty of his script, but found that the pain was much easier to bear when he received a cheque for $1,500. In 1954, Broadway saw the opening ofThe Girl in Pink Tights, a musical about the creation ofThe Black Crook. It ran for only 115 performances.

This mash-up of songs, dances, sketches and a bare minimum of plot set the style for what became known as musical comedy. These shows were loosely held together by well-worn stories, which were simply an excuse for the routines. Musical comedies of this type were particularly popular during the 1920s and ’30s. Any real drama was ignored, and, although the scores were often strong, th