America's Musical Stage Two Hundred Years of Musical Theatre

Subjects:

• Popular Culture » Popular Music

Reviews:

• [This book is] a comprehensive illustrated history of the U.S. musical from its colonial origins to the present, tracing the connections and influences of the minstrel show, operetta, burlesque, melodrama, revues, circus, dance, musical comedy, the Broadway opera, the book musical and other forms.... Author Julian Mates deals also with the recurrent aesthetic question of popular versus highbrow art, noting many serious American composers and performers have contributed to the popular musical stage. Further, Mates introduces readers to inside stuff--the various types of musical companies, changing repertories, the many kinds of musical performers.
  —Variety

Table of Contents:

• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Overture: Some History, an Analysis, and a Polemic
• Act I
• History: The Development of an Indeigenous Form
• Scene 1
• Companies
• Scene 2
• Repertory
• Scene 3
• Performers
• Act II
• Analysis of the Interrelationships Among Musical Stage Forms
• Scene 1
• American Opera: Comic, Grand, and Operetta
• Scene 2
• Minstrel Show and Circus
• Scene 3
• Melodrama and Dance
• Intermission: The Black Crook
• Scene 4
• Burlesque, Revue, and Vaudeville
• Scene 5
• Musical Comedy
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Bibliographical Essay
• Index