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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 

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.

In 1907 the Cunard Steamship Company launched the first of their Express Liners, the Lusitania and the Mauretania, ships that become bywords for speed, luxury and elegance in transatlantic travel. They were the first of the "Grand Hotels" at sea, sister ships each as long as the Capitol Building (and, interestingly, the Houses of Parliament), that came equipped with palm courts, orchestras, a la carte restaurants, electric lifts, telephones, and daily newspapers printed at sea. They were the first big British liners to be powered by four revolutionary Parsons steam turbine engines, and each had a top speed of over 25 knots. 

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 

Perhaps you’ve noticed a few more people joining the menu party lately. The . As are our friends from the National Life Insurance Company. We’ve even extended an invite to our canine crew (and their owners) from the Philadelphia Dog Show Association.

If you've transcribed even one menu, you've likely seen her stamp. A blue oval bearing her name, "Buttolph Collection", as graceful as a branding iron over asparagus, Russian caviar, or Boston baked beans.

Miss Frank E. Buttolph stamped nearly every menu she collected for the New York Public Library, twenty-three years worth, amounting to roughly 25,000 menus under her tenure alone.

But who was Miss Buttolph and why did she collect menus?

We've gotten a number of questions over the past week of What's on the Menu? about menus marked as "done." Do we really mean done? As in finished, vetted, archived for posterity? Fear not, we've cleared up this confusion with some new language. What we really meant to say was "under review."

Wow. We're sitting here with our mouths agape, simply overwhelmed --and thrilled! -- by the response to What's on the Menu? We knew you guys liked food, but holy (broiled) mackerel!

We launched WOTM very quietly, just three days ago, and, as of this typing, we have over 22K dishes transcribed! And it's evident, from the emails and tweets we've been receiving, that we have some very enthusiastic participants out there. Thank you!

Saratoga Chips.  Corned Beef Hash.  Large Pot of Oolong Tea. 

Okay, so they’re not included in the works of Shakespeare (as far as I know), but that doesn’t mean these dishes aren't of value to researchers and scholars and the generally curious who read menus in order to learn more about the food served and consumed in restaurants throughout history.

But until now this kind of information (the food!) was difficult - if not impossible - to search in our digitized menu collection.

For the next ten weeks, the New York Public Library will host a public, interactive reading of Candide, in connection to its ongoing exhibition at 42nd St.. This edition will look familiar to readers who remember the story, or even just its famous lines about “the best of all possible worlds” and “we must cultivate our garden.” But the innovative format, which facilitates reader annotations and discussions in the digital margins, will also yield surprises, as we have taken that closing line and used it as inspiration for a “cultivated” edition, with “seeds” of discussion sown by readers, opening up the text for public 

On behalf of The Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division, the NYPL’s Director of Digital Strategy and Scholarship and our partners EntropyFree LLC, I am proud to announce the launch of maps.nypl.org

The 2009 World Series brings together two cities uncommonly rich in baseball history. Though you might guess which team NYPL is rooting for this year, we've posted a selection of images on The Commons on Flickr representing a variety of New York and Philadelphia ball clubs of yore.

Staff of the New York Public Library recently hand picked a set of nearly 500 images, collected from across our Digital Gallery, composing them as a curated set of images at the Commons on Flickr. They represent the Hudson River Valley through several hundred years of history and complement Mapping New York's Shoreline, 1609-2009, now up in the Gottesman Exhibition Hall at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building.

As we watch with astonishment the "restructuring" of two American automotive titans, take a look back at the first four decades of their history, a time which saw multiple breaking waves of innovation in both engineering and design, and a steady absorption of manufacturing brands into the conglomerates we now see in crisis today.

Just last week, the New York Public Library updated their Flickr Commons photostream. The newest images are from the Milstein Division and include construction photographs of the Woolworth Building as well as block by block street views of both Fifth Avenue (1911) and Broadway (1899).

Did you enjoy following the adventures of our Design by the Book artists as they found inspiration at NYPL? Do you want to dig in to the Library's collections too, to find materials to fuel your own creativity? If so, then check out my User's Guide to NYPL for DIY Designers and Artisans--it will get you up to speed on the treasures and the quirks of the entire Library system. And with it in hand you can start your own hunt for inspiring stuff.