Musical Theatre
Musical theatre
“Musicals” as it is called in today’s world s one of the most intelligent form of entertainment. It is magical combination of acting, dialogues, music, dance and songs with an attachment of romance, tragedy, action and melodrama as the theme of the story goes. The emotional content of the musical as well as the technical portion hold s the main importance and the performance of the artists does the same by conveying the message through the form of words, background music and movements.
Musical theatre has generally been called “musical” from the onset of the 20th century and it can be held at large big budget venues like West End in London or Broadway Theatre in New York. Musical theatre started to grow popularity from mainly North America and Britain but has started to grow with time in different countries in Asia, Europe and even South America. Musicals are not necessary held in large big budget theatres but can be held by various amateur musical theatre groups in Schools, local theatre and other performances stages. Smaller theatres like Fringes Theatre and Off-Broadway are gaining popularity too and these kinds of small theatres are opening up in many countries giving the much required platform and encouragement for smaller amateur musical theatre group.
The core team for the success of musical theatre requires a director, music director and a choreographer. These are the main creative heads that generally decides and confirms the basic aspects of the musical that is music, lyrics and book. The book is also called libretto in Italian for the little book as the combination of dialogue and lyrics. The lines which are however are not actually spoken but expressed through movements in a musical is also included in the category of a book.
Some of the most famous musical theatre performances which are evergreen and are all time famous are Westside Story, Oklahoma!, The fantastiks, A Chorus Line, Les Miserables, The phantom of the opera and The Producers.
The success of the performances by the characters also involves a great deal of technicalities which are of great importance. The technical aspects include costumes, lighting arrangements, stage properties and special effects if any. These technical objectives greatly enhance the flavor of the musicals and create a much better impact on the audiences. The musical theatre performance with a great deal of detailing in all these aspects of the play are generally hit, however the extraordinary and extravagant use of these technical objects makes a show a high budget one.
The length of a musical theatre performance varies according to the groups which are performing the show and even the story line up. However with time and ages the play has shortened a lot from what length it generally used to continue in ancient times. Most of the musical plays generally held these days are of around one and half to three hours in length with an intermission of around ten to twenty minutes.
First portion of the musical generally is much longer then the second and the first part is mostly even more musical and the dialogues which are exchanged are sung through called recitative, the examples of which can be seen in plays like Evita and Les Miserables.
Musicals are generally performed n the language of their audience. Musical theatre is very relative to other form of intelligent entertainment called Opera. Opera has some primarily solo performance unlike musicals and the actor’s performers are generally trained or untrained singer but somehow they are able enough to sing few lines and this the reasons the limitations of all the opera artists are taken into account by the musical composer.
There are much kind of sub categories in terms of forms of evolution of musicals and opera like operetta, light opera, comic opera, burl Etta, travesty, burlesque, extravaganza, revue and music hall among many others. These forms are very complicated as it consists of combination of characters tics of both musicals and opera and are hard to distinguish which falls n which category.
Musicals are very complex performances as it includes more amount of music and less dialogue delivery and thus it becomes difficult for the play writer to compress the dialogue into the song to be sung by the actors. These songs are written with great deal of artistry and specifications as the songs do not have much words to express the emotion as much as a block of dialogue in a film can have.
The musicals with the growing popularity of films and television industry have lost lot number of audiences but still to date the classical audiences do not miss a play. Even the popular films like the kinds of Sound of music, Westside story, my fair lady and many more were adapted version from musical performances.
Musical theatre has their roots back in 5th century where they were performed by ancient Greeks for the kings and the high officials and the same was case in Roman Empire. Then the renaissance period flowed in where the artist clowns of this period gave birth to the introduction of comic musicals for the entertainment of their audiences and for their kings.
Ballad opera was the name given to the form of musical theatre performances and it was very popular Britain, France and Germany. The Example of this type of performances is The Beggars Opera. It was the first play to break all records since then and carry on for sixty two consecutive performances until the play called” Tom and Jerry” which broke record and continued 100 performances and then the record was again broken and the plays had over 150 performances.
Then with time many the musical theatre groups evolved through many phases and took many shapes and forms in the process. The musical theatre performances were used for the highlighting the problems of the society and even infusing spirit among the youths and the military during the time of the war. Then there was golden period when many romantic musical theatres performances captivated the heart of the millions and the London became the base of the famous and the talented artists.
Nowadays Broadway and musical theatre performances are in great demand due to the different and classical style of entertainment available and the gross revenue crosses billions of dollars through musicals all over the world making the musical performances just does not the source of entertainment for the audiences but a hope and dream for career and business opportunities for many of us.