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Author: Geoffrey Block
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199741506
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 615
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Book Description
This new second edition of Enchanted Evenings offers theater lovers an illuminating behind-the-scenes tour of some of America's best loved, most admired, and most enduring musicals. Readers will find such all-time favorites as Show Boat, Carousel, Kiss Me, Kate, Guys and Dolls, My Fair Lady, West Side Story, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George, and Phantom of the Opera. Geoffrey Block provides a documentary history of each of the musicals, showing how each work took shape and revealing, at the same time, how the American musical evolved from the 1920s to today, both on stage and on screen. The book's particular focus is on the music, offering a wealth of detail about how librettist, lyricist, composer, and director work together to shape the piece. Block also includes trenchant social commentary and lively backstage anecdotes. Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, the Gershwins, Rodgers and Hart, Kurt Weill, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Loewe, Frank Loesser, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and other luminaries emerge as hardworking craftsmen under enormous pressure to sell tickets without compromising their dramatic vision. The second edition includes a greatly expanded chapter on Sondheim, a new chapter on Lloyd Webber, and two new chapters on the film adaptations of the main musicals featured in the text (including such hard to find films as the original 1936 version of Anything Goes and the 1959 film adaptation of Porgy and Bess). Packed with information, including a complete discography and plot synopses and song-by-song scenic outlines for each of the fourteen shows, Enchanted Evenings is an essential reference as well as a riveting history. "A solid and fascinating work that should become a model of how to investigate and report on the evolution of a musical. Block's research is persuasive and his writing vivid. . . Indispensable for anyone who cares to know more about Broadway musicals than Playbill can provide." --Steven Bach, The Los Angeles Times Book Review
Author: Geoffrey Block
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199741506
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 615
Get Book Here
Book Description
This new second edition of Enchanted Evenings offers theater lovers an illuminating behind-the-scenes tour of some of America's best loved, most admired, and most enduring musicals. Readers will find such all-time favorites as Show Boat, Carousel, Kiss Me, Kate, Guys and Dolls, My Fair Lady, West Side Story, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George, and Phantom of the Opera. Geoffrey Block provides a documentary history of each of the musicals, showing how each work took shape and revealing, at the same time, how the American musical evolved from the 1920s to today, both on stage and on screen. The book's particular focus is on the music, offering a wealth of detail about how librettist, lyricist, composer, and director work together to shape the piece. Block also includes trenchant social commentary and lively backstage anecdotes. Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, the Gershwins, Rodgers and Hart, Kurt Weill, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Loewe, Frank Loesser, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and other luminaries emerge as hardworking craftsmen under enormous pressure to sell tickets without compromising their dramatic vision. The second edition includes a greatly expanded chapter on Sondheim, a new chapter on Lloyd Webber, and two new chapters on the film adaptations of the main musicals featured in the text (including such hard to find films as the original 1936 version of Anything Goes and the 1959 film adaptation of Porgy and Bess). Packed with information, including a complete discography and plot synopses and song-by-song scenic outlines for each of the fourteen shows, Enchanted Evenings is an essential reference as well as a riveting history. "A solid and fascinating work that should become a model of how to investigate and report on the evolution of a musical. Block's research is persuasive and his writing vivid. . . Indispensable for anyone who cares to know more about Broadway musicals than Playbill can provide." --Steven Bach, The Los Angeles Times Book Review
Author: Geoffrey Holden Block
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780195167306
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 436
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Book Description
Discusses the great Broadway hits, how they were conceived, written and performed.
Author: Washington Geoffrey Block Professor of Music University of Puget Sound
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199769885
Category : Musicals
Languages : en
Pages : 434
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Book Description
The classic musicals of Broadway can provide us with truly enchanted evenings. But while many of us can hum the music and even recount the plot from memory, we are often much less knowledgeable about how these great shows were put together. What was the inspiration for Rodgers and Harts Pal Joey, or Rodgers and Hammersteins Carousel? Why is Marias impassioned final speech in West Side Story spoken, rather than sung? Now, in Enchanted Evenings, Geoffrey Block offers theatre lovers an illuminating behind-the- scenes tour of some of the best loved, most admired, and most enduring musicals of Broadways Golden Era. Readers will find insightful studies of such all-time favorites as Show Boat, Anything Goes, Porgy and Bess, Carousel, Kiss Me, Kate, Guys and Dolls, The Most Happy Fella, My Fair Lady, and West Side Story. Block provides a documentary history of fourteen musicals in all--plus an epilogue exploring the plays of Stephen Sondheim--showing how each work took shape and revealing, at the same time, production by production, how the American musical evolved from the 1920s to the early 1960s, and beyond. The book's particular focus is on the music, offering a wealth of detail about how librettist, lyricist, composer, and director work together to shape the piece. Drawing on manuscript material such as musical sketches, autograph manuscripts, pre-production librettos and lyric drafts, Block reveals the winding route the works took to get to their final form. Block blends this close attention to the nuances of musical composition and stagecraft with trenchant social commentary and lively backstage anecdotes. Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, the Gershwins, Rodgers and Hart, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Loewe, Kurt Weill, Frank Loesser, Leonard Bernstein, Sondheim, and other luminaries emerge as hardworking craftsmen under enormous pressure to sell tickets without compromising their dramatic vision and integrity. Opening night reviews and accounts of critical and popular response to subsequent revivals show how particular musicals have adapted to changing times and changing audiences, shedding light on why many of these innovative shows are still performed in high schools, colleges, and community theaters across the country, while others, such as Weills One Touch of Venus or Marc Blitzsteins The Cradle Will Rock, languish in comparative obscurity. Packed with information, including a complete discography and plot synopses and song-by-song scenic outlines for each of the fourteen shows, Enchanted Evenings is an essential reference as well as a riveting history. It will deepen readersappreciation and enjoyment of these beloved musicals even as it delights both the seasoned theater goer and the neophyte encountering the magic of Broadway for the first time.
Author: Nicholas Everett
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521796392
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 334
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Book Description
The Cambridge Companion to the Musical provides an accessible introduction to one of the liveliest and most popular forms of musical performance. Written by a team of specialists in the field of musical theatre especially for students and theatregoers, it offers a guide to the history and development of the musical in England and America (including coverage of New York s Broadway and London s West End traditions). Starting with the early history of the musical, the volume comes right up to date and examines the latest works and innovations, and includes information on the singers, audience and critical reception, and traditions. There is fresh coverage of the American musical theatre in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the British musical theatre in the middle of the twentieth century, and the rock musical. The Companion contains an extensive bibliography and photos from key productions.
Author: Raymond Knapp
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199874727
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 481
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Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of The American Musical offers new and cutting-edge essays on the most important and compelling issues and topics in the growing, interdisciplinary field of musical-theater and film-musical studies. Taking the form of a "keywords" book, it introduces readers to the concepts and terms that define the history of the musical as a genre and that offer ways to reflect on the specific creative choices that shape musicals and their performance on stage and screen. The handbook offers a cross-section of essays written by leading experts in the field, organized within broad conceptual groups, which together capture the breadth, direction, and tone of musicals studies today. Each essay traces the genealogy of the term or issue it addresses, including related issues and controversies, positions and problematizes those issues within larger bodies of scholarship, and provides specific examples drawn from shows and films. Essays both re-examine traditional topics and introduce underexplored areas. Reflecting the concerns of scholars and students alike, the authors emphasize critical and accessible perspectives, and supplement theory with concrete examples that may be accessed through links to the handbook's website. Taking into account issues of composition, performance, and reception, the book's contributors bring a wide range of practical and theoretical perspectives to bear on their considerations of one of America's most lively, enduring artistic traditions. The Oxford Handbook of The American Musical will engage all readers interested in the form, from students to scholars to fans and aficionados, as it analyses the complex relationships among the creators, performers, and audiences who sustain the genre.
Author: Lori Harrison-Kahan
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813547822
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 241
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Book Description
During the first half of the twentieth century, American Jews demonstrated a commitment to racial justice as well as an attraction to African American culture. Until now, the debate about whether such black-Jewish encounters thwarted or enabled Jews' claims to white privilege has focused on men and representations of masculinity while ignoring questions of women and femininity. The White Negress investigates literary and cultural texts by Jewish and African American women, opening new avenues of inquiry that yield more complex stories about Jewishness, African American identity, and the meanings of whiteness. Lori Harrison-Kahan examines writings by Edna Ferber, Fannie Hurst, and Zora Neale Hurston, as well as the blackface performances of vaudevillian Sophie Tucker and controversies over the musical and film adaptations of Show Boat and Imitation of Life. Moving between literature and popular culture, she illuminates how the dynamics of interethnic exchange have at once produced and undermined the binary of black and white.
Author: Robert Gordon
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019990927X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 517
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Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of Sondheim Studies offers a series of cutting-edge essays on the most important and compelling topics in the growing field of Sondheim Studies. Focusing on broad groups of issues relating to the music and the production of Sondheim works, rather than on biographical questions about the composer himself, the handbook represents a cross-disciplinary introduction to comprehending Sondheim in musicological, theatrical, and socio-cultural terms. This collection of never-before published essays addresses issues of artistic method and musico-dramaturgical form, while at the same time offering close readings of individual shows from a variety of analytical perspectives. The handbook is arranged into six broad sections: issues of intertextuality and authorship; Sondheim's pioneering work in developing the non-linear form of the concept musical; the production history of Sondheim's work; his writing for film and television; his exploitation and deployment of a wide range of musical genres; and how interpretation through key critical lenses (including sociology, history, and feminist and queer theory) establishes his position in a broader cultural context.
Author: Marc Napolitano
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199364834
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 305
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Book Description
When the show was first produced in 1960, at a time when transatlantic musical theatre was dominated by American productions, Oliver! already stood out for its overt Englishness. But in writing Oliver!, librettist and composer Lionel Bart had to reconcile the Englishness of his Dickensian source with the American qualities of the integrated book musical. To do so, he turned to the musical traditions that had defined his upbringing: English music hall, Cockney street singing, and East End Yiddish theatre. This book reconstructs the complicated biography of Bart's play, from its early inception as a pop musical inspired by a marketable image, through its evolution into a sincere Dickensian adaptation that would push English musical theatre to new dramatic heights. The book also addresses Oliver!'s phenomenal reception in its homeland, where audiences responded to the musical's Englishness with a nationalistic fervor. The musical, which has more than fulfilled its promise as one of the most popular English musicals of all time, remains one of the country's most significant shows. Author Marc Napolitano shows how Oliver!'s popularity has ultimately exerted a significant influence on two separate cultural trends. Firstly, Bart's adaptation forever impacted the culture text of Dickens's Oliver Twist; to this day, the general perception of the story and the innumerable allusions to the novel in popular media are colored heavily by the sights, scenes, sounds, and songs from the musical, and virtually every major adaptation of from the 1970s on has responded to Bart's work in some way. Secondly, Oliver! helped to move the English musical forward by establishing a post-war English musical tradition that would eventually pave the way for the global dominance of the West End musical in the 1980s. As such, Napolitano's book promises to be an important book for students and scholars in musical theatre studies as well as to general readers interested in the megamusical.
Author:
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780197263242
Category : Civilization
Languages : en
Pages : 494
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Book Description
Author: Rick Pender
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538115875
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 654
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Book Description
Praise from Jesse Green, New York Times Chief Theater Critic, Arts, in the 2023 Holiday Gift Guide: “From A (the director George Abbott) to Y ('You Could Drive a Person Crazy'), The Stephen Sondheim Encyclopedia, by Rick Pender, offers an astonishingly comprehensive look, in more than 130 entries, at the late master’s colleagues, songs, shows and methods." The Stephen Sondheim Encyclopedia is a wonderfully detailed and comprehensive reference devoted to musical theater’s most prolific and admired composer and lyricist. Entries cover Sondheim’s numerous collaborators, from composers and directors to designers and orchestras; key songs, such as his Academy Award winner “Sooner or Later” (Dick Tracy); and major works, including Assassins, Company, Follies, Sweeney Todd, and West Side Story. The encyclopedia also profiles the actors who originated roles and sang Sondheim’s songs for the first time, including Ethel Merman, Angela Lansbury, Mandy Patinkin, and Bernadette Peters. Featuring a detailed biographical entry for Sondheim, a chronology of his career, a listing of his many awards, and discussions of his opinions on movies, opera, and more, this wide-ranging resource will attract musical theater enthusiasts again and again.
