Act One Closing 'Montage'

TV Tropes calls it the Massive Multiplayer Ensemble Number.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MassiveMultiplayerEnsembleNumber

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I believe the term for it is quodlibet.

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In the original Dutch production '3 musketiers' (three musketeers) was a song called Vecht (fight).
It started with Vecht, but at the ending all the characters came onstage and start singing reprises of there own songs. It's kinda awesome!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3juVNxFSDU8
(It's an official dvd recording)

The song was later cut when it transferd to Germany..

It's called a "finaletto."

I would say Rossini either invented it, or it was a common device in 17th- and 18th-century opera and he did it more than anyone else. (Mozart tended to end his first acts better than Rossini.)

Gershwin used finalettos ("finaletti"?) throughout the 1920s in his musical comedies and then in the 30s in his more sophisticated musicals like Strike Up the Band. Other 1920s musicals had one too, like No, No Nanette. Jerome Kern and Kurt Weill used them too.

There's even one on Broadway now: The first act of How to Succeed ends with a song Frank Loesser actually called "Finaletto."

I'm not a Viennese operetta expert, but I think it was a common way to end a first or second act (when there were three acts). It makes sense when you think of it: the big choral sound is exciting.

That's part of what was revolutionary about West Side: You have this orgasmic quintet, the audience applauds, they think they're going out on a high, and wham! It's a choreographed fight scene that leave two of the main characters dead and the male lead a murderer. Intermission!

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Someone I know once called them "Status Quo songs." As in, a song coming in, usually at the end of the first act, where we are reminded of what all of the characters want and what problem they have found themselves in. But I agree, they are often one of the most compelling parts of a show.

One of many signs pointing to how truly, wonderfully traditional The Book of Mormon is is that they do a pretty good one at the end of their first act.

They kinda used something like that in the Australian production of Chess. In this new rewrite, Heaven Help My Heart was the last song of Act One and all of the characters started overlapping towards the end of the song all culminating in a big reprise of One Night in Bangkok.

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