Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! has long been accepted as the first Broadway musical to achieve total musical and dramatic unity, where individual songs reflect the
In an interview included in this release’s smartly produced booklet, Michael Tilson Thomas responds to Leonard Bernstein’s speculation that West Side Story would “change the
Stephen Sondheim does not consider Sweeney Todd an opera, but that doesn’t stop his 1979 musical theater masterpiece from turning up in opera houses and
Gustave Kerker (1847-1923) was born in Germany, raised in America from childhood, and became in his day a popular musical theater composer and contributor to
No real precedent existed for Richard Foreman’s musical theater madhouse Doctor Selavy’s Magic Theatre. It held forth during the 1972/73 Off-Broadway season, drawing packed houses
Hollywood finally did right by Leonard Bernstein with West Side Story. It had a lot to make up for. Seventy percent of his score for
How well I remember attending Sweeney Todd, not long after Stephen Sondheim’s musical thriller opened in the spring of 1979. I was familiar with Sondheim’s
Largely owing to its Borodin parentage but also attributable to the grand and fantastic vision of its two creators, Kismet belongs to an elite group
This show put average teenagers on the map. It also satirized the saga of Elvis going into the army and tackled racism toward Hispanic Americans.
This was one of the first Broadway shows to exhibit any racial sensibility, as a Congressman is magically turned into an African American and must