While people often think of musical theater of the 1960s as a continuation of the Golden Age, it was an era of great change, musically and culturally.
Category Archives: Repertoire
The Golden Age – A Gamechanger for the Musical Theater Genre
When I went to NYC in January 2020 (yes, I know, right before the pandemic), I was told I had to see the revival of Oklahoma!. I was skeptical – it was a Golden Age musical, so it was old-fashioned by today’s standards, and it had never been one of my favorite ones. But I was told, “Oh, this is different. This isn’t your mother’s Oklahoma!”
And it wasn’t.
And I think it was very true to the mission that Oscar Hammerstein II set when he started writing Oklahoma with Richard Rodgers (their first collaboration). To shake things up – to fully integrate the story, the songs, the dancing – instead of having the songs being merely a toe-tapping diversion. Instead, the songs moved the action along, they were a continuation of the dialogue, and they developed the characters fully. Hammerstein had started this work with Jerome Kern in Showboat, but it was fully realized in Oklahoma! and in their other musicals of the 1940s and 1950s.
Tin Pan Alley’s Impact on Today’s Musical Theater
In Tuesday’s blogpost about Tin Pan Alley and the Jazz Age, I said that I wanted to talk a little more about how the songwriters of that era impacted shows after it, even up to today.
When I taught this course back in 2020, I asked my class the question:
What do these old dead guys have to do with today’s musicals?
And today I answer the question, from the perspectives of melody (Berlin), rhythm (Gershwin), and “anything goes” (Porter).
Tin Pan Alley and the Jazz Age
Today I’m going to focus on the period of 1925 to 1942 – the period from (roughly) the first musical written by the Gershwin brothers, Lady Be Good, through the last collaboration of Rodgers & Hart, By Jupiter. The composers of this era were associated with Tin Pan Alley and the music of the Jazz Age.
(Lady Be Good actually premiered in 1924, but hey, it’s close enough for …. jazz.)
From Tin Pan Alley to Today (Part 1)
From Tin Pan Alley to Today:
In 2025, Broadway musicals can be originals (Hadestown, The Outsiders, The Great Gatsby), they can be jukebox musicals (MJ, & Juliet, Moulin Rouge) or they can be revivals (Gypsy, Sunset Boulevard, Wonderful Town). A well-rounded performer will know how to adapt their vocal style and technique to suit the era in which the piece is written (while still appealing to modern sensibilities). I’ve sat in on auditions where people are auditioning for a pre-1970 musical but bringing repertoire that is contemporary and not at all in the right style.
BIPOC Women of a Certain Age: Avoiding Appropriation
In these days of non-traditional casting, it is not unusual for BIPOC women to be cast in roles originated by White women. However, the reverse is rarely done, and for good reasons. There are tons of songs to sing and to teach. If a song is for a character in a show and that show is racially or culturally focused, it is not for you or your students, if neither you nor they are a POC. To do so is crossing the line from appreciation to appropriation..
Momgenues, Battleaxes, and Dowagers
If opera has biddies, boys, and bitches (or witches, bitches, and britches), then musical theater has momgenues, battleaxes, and dowagers. The difference is that in opera, it’s about voice parts (the mezzo), and in musical theater, it’s about type.
Stephen Sondheim’s Women of a Certain Age
The musicals of Stephen Sondheim often feature mature women as supporting and leading characters. Many writers have speculated that the composer, having had a tumultuous relationship with his own mother, worked out some of these issues in his musicals. His female characters of a certain age are often flawed characters – the degree of the flaw depends on the story.
Not Enough Sopranos
In musical theater, particularly in post-Golden Age musical theater, there aren’t a lot of roles for sopranos. There aren’t that many roles for women, for that matter. A major problem for many of the high schools at which I have had students is that they choose musicals that are largely male-dominant, and then don’t have enough boys come out for auditions (Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, anyone?).
Jerry’s Women (or Hello, Jerry!)
While the majority of leading ladies in American musical theater are cast as ingenues, there is one composer who found success writing many of his early shows for women over 40, some of which were in titular roles. This was Jerry Herman (1931-2019). In this post, I discuss these shows and their impact on American musical theater.