Actually, opera originated as an aristocratic art form in the Renaissance courts of Milan in the late 16th and early 17th centuries.
Timote, in 1930, Variety reported the Broadway openings of 187 shows, of which 130 were new plays. These figures, however, represented a 20% drop in production from the previous year, thanks to the Depression.
I agree with you, JohnPopa---the contemporary musical that has been successfully thought through and amounts to something or has an idea to impart is virtually non-existent.
MisterMatt, Titanic and Parade can not, by any stretch of the imagination, be considered classics.
The following is a replication of a post of mine from another thread on the same subject:
Economic considerations aside (and they are considerable), the practitioners of musical theatre, as is true in many other areas of the arts, have essentially suffered a crisis of self-confidence.
The musical has taken enormous strides during the last thirty years, advancing the range of its subject matter, stagecraft and narrative techniques. Many exciting innovations resulted from the pioneering efforts of the concept/modern musical.
But somewhere along the line, its creators succumbed to the self-conscious, postmodern cliche that plagues so much of twentieth century art: only ambivalence, cynicism, despair, irony, emotional aridity, textual/musical difficulty, inaccessibility, grotesqueries, etc. have meaning or validity, thus robbing the musical of its joy, poetry, pathos, romance, humor and VARIETY. Sondheim, a polemicist who argued the seriousness of his craft as much as Richard Wagner did his, spawned a whole generation of wanna-bes who, though ambitious, had little of the craft, talent, authentic world-view, and theatre smarts (not to mention collaborators) of the Master and took up a weighty, nouveau-arty approach to writing shows, mostly with grim results.
Whereas the best musicals of the past, those that combined entertainment with an idea, were created with the middlebrow (I use the term affirmatively) audience in mind, the newer shows placed a greater value on the overintellectualized idea and the writers' own 'self-expression' at the expense of audience identification and enjoyment. The notion that the serious musical was 'too good for the average man' began appearing in newspaper interviews with musical theatre writers (usually following their latest flop) and the audience was suddenly demonized as the uncomprehending enemy, a stunning irony, considering the democratic underpinnings of the musical, and a perversion of the writer/audience dynamic. Is it any wonder that audiences have blithely sought their pleasures in confections such as CRAZY FOR YOU, MAMMA MIA, THE PRODUCERS or the DISNEY shows, while the serious musical has, at least temporarily, reached a dead end?
Broadway has always been a populist market. I truly believe there will always be a demand for shows that celebrate our humanity with feeling and intelligence, that acknowledge the darker side of life AND its beauty and joy as well. But given the absence of such shows (and nature abhorring a vacuum), audiences, for $100 a pop, will flock to the familiar, i.e., anthology shows.
The following quote of Fellini's may be specifically referring to movies but can apply to musicals as well:
"To make an interesting picture for a few people is relatively easy. To make a bad picture for a lot of people is very easy. The great thing, the great problem, and the most interesting and new approach in art, is to try and make great things for the greatest amount of people. That's the solution Chaplin found, and I would like to see a new Chaplin today. And not new, young directors who just want to be interesting for critics."
Amen, Federico.
Updated On: 8/13/04 at 02:27 AM
