Oscar Hammerstein II

“Show Boat”: Excerpts from Kern and Hammerstein’s Groundbreaking Musical

by

When Show Boat opened at New York’s Ziegfeld Theatre on December 27, 1927, it marked a revolutionary moment in the American musical theater. Audiences were confronted with a new kind of work which was neither a frothy operetta, nor a loosely constructed Jazz Age musical comedy. The Musical Play was born, with its serious, dramatic themes, and integration of music and dialogue. An entry in The Complete Book of Light Opera includes this description: Here …

Read more

Lonely Broadway, Circa 1946

by

Here’s an interesting historical coincidence from the golden age of American musical theater: At one fleeting moment in the late 1940s, there were three shows running on (or near) Broadway containing songs with strikingly similar titles. The shows had little in common in terms of style or substance. But the three songs, Lonely Room, Lonely Town, and Lonely House share an obvious, if superficial bond. Lonely Room Lonely Room is a dark soliloquy, occurring near the end …

Read more