Song Character Analysis Worksheet - The University of North ...
Song Character Analysis Worksheet - The University of North ...
Song Character Analysis Worksheet - The University of North ...
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ackground, characters, and local color.” 28 Kern had less difficulty in persuading Oscar<br />
Hammerstein II to join him in creating an operatic “comedy” where the plot would be the<br />
primary consideration. Somehow the team also convinced Florenz Ziegfeld to produce<br />
this innovative concept within a two-year contract span, an unprecedented amount <strong>of</strong><br />
preparation time for the 1920s. This was not to be the “typical Ziegfeld girlie show,”<br />
according to musical theatre historian Miles Kreuger. 29 Ziegfeld did not quite understand<br />
Kern and Hammerstein’s commitment to creating such a tightly integrated drama, nor its<br />
extended gestation period. 30 But he allowed the collaborators time to construct and<br />
improve the musical version <strong>of</strong> Show Boat through many revisions and out-<strong>of</strong>-town<br />
tryouts until its eventual opening night at the new Ziegfeld <strong>The</strong>ater in New York, 27<br />
December 1927. 31<br />
An immediate success, Show Boat established a new standard <strong>of</strong> musical drama in<br />
American theatre with its blend <strong>of</strong> comedy, operetta, and melodrama characteristics.<br />
Joseph Swain explained this new plot-driven integration in “the songs, the generous<br />
28 David Ewen, <strong>The</strong> World <strong>of</strong> Jerome Kern: A Biography (New York: Holt & Co., 1960), 86.<br />
29 Show Boat: <strong>The</strong> Story <strong>of</strong> a Classic American Musical (New York: Da Capo Press, 1990), 26.<br />
30 Show Boat was also the theatre introduction <strong>of</strong> a young orchestrator named Robert Russell<br />
Bennett. Stacy Wolf compared Kern’s vision <strong>of</strong> a fully integrated production to Wagner’s realization <strong>of</strong><br />
Gesamtkunstwerk in A Problem Like Maria: Gender and Sexuality in the American Musical (Ann Arbor:<br />
<strong>University</strong> <strong>of</strong> Michigan Press, 2002), 27.<br />
31 <strong>The</strong> premiere <strong>of</strong> Show Boat in Washington, D. C. lasted four hours and forty minutes as<br />
Hammerstein sought to remain true to the expanse <strong>of</strong> Ferber’s text. Many songs and scenes were revised<br />
during tryouts there, in Cleveland, and in Philadelphia before the premiere in New York City. <strong>The</strong>re is an<br />
urban myth that Show Boat was intended to be the grand premiere for Ziegfeld’s new theater in January<br />
1927, but its production delays allowed Rio Rita to steal that distinction. Miles Kreuger dispels that myth<br />
and many others in his fascinating and exhaustive account <strong>of</strong> all details related to this musical, Show Boat:<br />
<strong>The</strong> Story <strong>of</strong> a Classic American Musical. Rio Rita (Harry Tierney, music; Joseph McCarthy, lyrics; Guy<br />
Bolton and Fred Thompson, libretto) ran 494 performances and was the first successful film adaptation <strong>of</strong> a<br />
musical. See Stanley Green, Broadway Musicals, Show by Show, 5th ed., ed. Kay Green (Milwaukee: Hal<br />
Leonard Publishing, 1996), 55.<br />
27