The Black Crook: A Most Wonderful History. Philadelphia: Barclay, 1866.

From the Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature.

Musicals I

The Black Crook

A precursor to the modern American musical, The Black Crook was a mid-nineteenth-century Faustian melodrama that was billed as a musical extravaganza. This play, with a production cost said to be $50,000, opened in New York’s Niblo’s Garden on September 12, 1866, and ran for 475 performances, becoming the first Broadway show to last for over a year. The extravaganza featured elaborate scenery, a large cast, and a dancing troupe of chorus girls who, clad in tights, created quite a sensation.

The Romantic Operatic Extravaganza…”Evangeline; or, The Belle of Acadia.” In Three Acts with Original Music, by Mr. Edward E. Rice. Text by Mr. J. Cheever Goodwin. Playbill. Boston: Boston Museum, 1876.

From the Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature.

Evangeline

In 1874, J. Cheever Goodwin and Edward E. Rice created a successful musical comedy, or “opera bouffe,” loosely based on Longfellow’s poem “Evangeline.” The show incorporated spectacular sets, which, as noted in the program, were “to have been painted by Titian and Rembrandt. Unfortunately they died too soon. Rather than disappoint the public though, another artist was procured.” Characters ranged from Evangeline to a dancing heifer, and the action took place in such exotic places as the Sahara Desert and the American West. Originally produced in Boston, Evangeline became a popular show staged throughout the United States in the late nineteenth century.

Ferber, Edna. Show Boat. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page, 1926.

From the Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature.

Show Boat

This musical masterpiece, created by Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern and based on the novel by Edna Ferber, irrevocably changed American musical theatre. Show Boat interlaced music and story to create a musical play. Its popularity with audiences endures seventy-five years after its premiere in December 1927. It has been revived countless times, translated into film, and given America songs such as “Ol’ Man River” and “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man.”

Kaufman, George S, and Morrie Ryskind. Of Thee I Sing. Lyric by Ira Gershwin. New York: Knopf, 1932.

From the Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature.

Of Thee I Sing

Produced in 1931, George Kaufman’s political comedy, with music and lyrics by George and Ira Gershwin, became the first musical to win a Pulitzer Prize. Satirizing the American presidential campaign process, the Vice-Presidency, the Supreme Court, and Congress, Of Thee I Sing sought to lift the spirits of a country suffering through the Depression. Though now considered to be dated, Of Thee I Sing provides a nostalgic look at American political life in the early twentieth century.

Lithograph, entitled “Pit Orchestra,” by Don Freeman. [New York, 1932].

Courtesy of the University of Virginia Art Museum.

Freeman drew this image from the orchestra pit looking up to a contented audience at a 1932 performance of Of Thee I Sing.