Musical of the Month

A guest post & edition by Brian D. Valencia

When Shuffle Along opened at the 63rd Street Music Hall on May 23, 1921, it marked the return of all-black musical shows to Broadway after nearly a decade-long silence. The last successful musical wholly written and performed by African Americans to be performed south of Harlem had been the George Walker–Bert Williams vehicle Bandanna Land in 1908. When Walker fell ill on its tour, Williams was left to star alone in the following year’s Mr. Lode of Koal, which ran only half as long as its predecessor with half of its top billing missing. The only other original 

A Guest Blog on Victor Herbert's Birthday by Professor William Everett

Victor Herbert’s Babes in Toyland is typical of turn-of-the-century musical theater in that it encompasses various musical styles and tropes drawn from multiple genres. Musical comedy, as Babes in Toyland is described in the libretto, is evident in the comedic dialogue and contemporary references. Extravaganza, the designator it shares with The Wizard of Oz, comes through dazzling spectacle. But it is operetta, the quintessential Continental European style, that concerns us here.

A Guest Blog by Adam Roberts, Music Director

Greetings! My name is Adam Roberts, and I serve as Music Director of the Music Theatre Online archive. If you're a theater professional, you're probably already aware of the responsibilities traditionally assumed by a music director (MD). But perhaps you're new to the musical theater world and are unfamiliar with the term. This entry will focus on my general approach to the musical direction of this specific initiative, both for readers who already have a solid handle on what we musical directors do as well as those who may be exploring the topic from an "outsider's" perspective.

A Guest Blog by Larry Moore

In the NYPL Rare Books Division, among the Townsend Walsh correspondence, there is an undated 1902 letter from director Julian Mitchell to his publicist/business manager, Townsend Walsh, informing Walsh in confidence that he had asked Glen MacDonough to rewrite the libretto for The Wizard of Oz before it opened at New York's Majestic Theatre at Columbus Circle in January 1903. Since MacDonough's copyright libretto for Babes in Toyland was registered with the Library of Congress in January 1903, it's difficult to know which libretto was actually borrowing elements from the other. It's most likely that Mitchell 

A Guest Post By Professor William Everett

The Wizard of Oz, this month’s Musical of the Month, has ties to one of the most important musical theater composers of its day, Victor Herbert (1859-1924). The Irish-born and German-trained cellist, conductor, and composer had written several significant works for the musical theater in the years leading up to the appearance of The Wizard of Oz, most notably The Fortune Teller (1898).

The end of the year frequently inspires an introspective comparison of one’s ambitions against one’s accomplishments and an increased (if temporary) resolve to close the distance between the two. I suspect among the crowd celebrating in Times Square this Saturday night, there will be at least a few web designers who wish they were actors, bloggers who wish they were novelists, and bankers who wish they were rock stars. Hopefully this will be the year for some of them.

A Guest Blog By David Maxine of Hungry Tiger Press

The Wizard of Oz is one of the best-loved fairy tales and one of the best-loved films of all time. Yet few people know that it was a Broadway musical in 1903 that made Oz, Dorothy Gale, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Woodman household names. L. Frank Baum’s children's book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was published in 1900, forever securing Baum’s reputation as an author for children. But Baum’s first love was the theatre. In the summer of 1901, Baum with Wizard of Oz illustrator, W. W. Denslow, and twenty-four year old composer Paul Tietjens began plans for 

Like many who spent their early childhood in those years before home video technology (VCRs, DVDs, Netflix, etc.) became ubquitous, I have fond memories of watching the annual television broadcasts of the 1939 film adaptation of The Wizard of Oz with my family.  Unlike most children, though, I spent much of my later childhood obsessed with the story.  As a six year old, I became a card-carrying member of The International Wizard of Oz Club, read all 14 Oz books by L. Frank Baum, and hunted in used-bookstores for the additional authorized books by Ruth Plumly Thompson, Jack Snow, and Dick Martin.  I vaguely knew that there were dramatic adaptations of The Wizard of 

A Guest Blog by Project Co-Director, William Everett

Orientalism* and propaganda were common themes in American musical theater and popular song during the years surrounding World War I. Revues frequently included scenes set in the Middle East, and some of Broadway’s most famous composer-lyricists wrote music in direct response to the conflict. Orientalist manifestations include Irving Berlin’s “In My Harem” (1913) and the Omar Khayyam sequence in The Passing Show of 1914, while wartime messages infuse George M. Cohan’s “Over There” (1917) and Irving Berlin’s Yip, Yip, Yaphank (1918). These 

A Guest Blog by Project Co-Director, William Everett

The German-born composer Gustav Luders (1865-1913) was firmly established in the U.S. when he teamed with librettist-lyricist Frank Pixley (1867-1919) to create The Prince of Pilsen in 1902. The musical comedy, the third of their seven collaborations, was the team's most successful undertaking. (They also created The Burgomeister, 1900; King Dodo, 1901; Woodland, 1904; The Grand Mogul, 1906; Marcelle, 1908; and The Gypsy, 1912.)

The text of the next Musical of the Month will be released around the middle of October. However, to tide you over until then, I have several exciting announcements.

A second blog post from guest blogger Tracey Chessum:

Here’s a question: If John Philip Sousa wrote at least 10 comic operas, most of which were well received not only on Broadway but on tour around the United States, and if he has been identified as a composer who filled the void between Gilbert & Sullivan and Victor Herbert, why have most of us never heard of his musicals? The obvious reason is that his marches outshine his musicals, and thus his collection of comic operas is often overlooked. However, I would argue that there is a further explanation: these comic operas are so tied to a specific historical moment 

Within the world of music theater there are many sub-genres — pop opera, juke-box musical, concept musical, and so on — that go in and out of style as generations transition and audience tastes change. At present, the juke-box musical and musical comedies are very popular; 18 years ago — when I first fell in love with musicals — pop operas like Evita, Les Miserables, and Phantom of the Opera filled out the season schedule at most regional touring houses. The Rodgers-and-Hammerstein-style “integrated book musical” seemed shockingly innovative in the 1940s, became a joke in the 1970s, and today The Book of Mormon, using 

Last year, musical theater composers Georgia Stitt and Jason Robert Brown wrote a couple of high profile blog entries in which they pleaded with their fans to stop illegally sharing the sheet music of their works online. Several national (and international) news organizations followed up with Brown in radio and print interviews, and Stitt is now leading an effort in the Dramatists Guild to find ways of curtailing such copyright infringement.  

For July’s Musical of the Month, we take a summer vacation to a tropical island in the Philippines: a place where the scent of a native flower perfumes the air and provides both the place, and the musical, with its name: Florodora. It is the South Pacific in 1900, before the ravages of the Second World War and the social conscience of Rodgers and Hammerstein caused audiences to consider it as anything other than an Edenic garden of delights. Every young man and woman in the piece is beautiful, and the most pressing concerns are not racism and war, but petty swindlers and a tyrannical but ineffectual aristocratic landlord.

As the month of June draws to a close, it's time to leave The Black Crook and move on to a new Musical of the Month. Before I do, though, I want to take a minute to let those who may have been intrigued by the small samples I’ve posted know how they can find more information about The Black Crook and other historical musicals.

 This is the second in a series of posts about the 1866 proto-musical, The Black Crook. See my first post in the series for additional background on the show

Very little is known about the music used in the original production of The Black Crook. Early advertisements feature the scenic effects (TRANSFORMATION SCENE or THE CRYSTAL CASCADE) much more prominently than the music. Spectacular dances (eg. "Pas de Demons" or "Pas de Fleurs") are sometimes listed as well (albeit in a slightly smaller typeface), but rarely are the songs announced at all. Some 1866 programs cite "music 

Most musical theater history books cautiously locate the birth of the American Musical at Niblo's Garden (a theater once located on Prince Street) on September 12, 1866 at the opening of The Black Crook. Of course, among many scholars, this identification is regarded as something of a joke — song had been integrated into plays since the early days of Greek drama, and the songs in The Black Crook, at least in its original version, were mostly diversions from the plot — no more related to the action and characters than commercial breaks are to an episode of Glee. Nonetheless, for all the very good reasons to reject The Black Crook as the 

Growing up in St. Louis, Missouri, my favorite part of the week was visiting the Florissant Valley Public Library and checking out cast recordings. I remember flipping through the bins of LPs, staring down at the big black album with glowing cat eyes, and wondering what in the world that show might be about. It was always a little disappointing when the liner notes were missing or the plot summaries were particularly sparse. In such cases, I would make up a story to fit between the songs (which led to some surprises when I finally saw these shows in their entirety). Sometimes I would go to the shelves to try to find a libretto, but, with the exception of the titles in Stanley