Musical theater facts for kids

Kids Encyclopedia Facts
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Naples Players' teen production of Thoroughly Modern Millie, 2009

Musical theater (or musical theatre) is a kind of performance in a theater. A work of musical theater is called a musical. It uses acting, music, songs, and often dance. Some musicals (for example Les Miserables) have only a few lines of dialogue. Everything else is sung. It is usually a mixture of speaking and song. Some well-known musicals are West Side Story, The Sound of Music, Chicago and Oklahoma!.

Music has been a part of drama since ancient times, but modern Western musical theatre emerged during the 19th century.

1850 to 1914

Around 1850, the French composer Hervé was experimenting with a form of comic musical theatre that came to be called opérette. The best known composers of operetta were Jacques Offenbach from the 1850s to the 1870s and Johann Strauss II in the 1870s and 1880s. Offenbach's melodies, and his librettists' satire, formed a model for the musical theatre that followed.

"Offenbach is undoubtedly the most significant figure in the history of the 'musical'."

Important influences were the works of Gilbert and Sullivan in Britain and those of Harrigan and Hart in America. These were followed by the numerous Edwardian musical comedies and the musical theatre works of American creators like George M. Cohan.

Images for kids

  • Crookfinale

    The Black Crook (1866), which some historians consider the first musical

  • GaietyGirlDudleyHardy

    A Gaiety Girl (1893) was one of the first hit musicals

  • Sichuan Opera in Chengdu

    Chinese opera performers

  • Opera backdrop.

    A view of Rhodes by John Webb, to be painted on a backshutter for the first performance of The Siege of Rhodes (1856)

  • Circa-1879-DOyly-Carte-HMS-Pinafore-from-Library-of-Congress2

    Poster, c. 1879

  • Victor herbert

    Victor Herbert

  • Sallysm

    Sheet music from Sally, 1920

  • Rodgers and Hart NYWTS

    Rodgers and Hart

  • Rodgers and Hammerstein and Berlin and Tamiris NYWTS

    Rodgers and Hammerstein (left and right) and Irving Berlin (center)

  • Peters in 08

    Bernadette Peters (shown in 2008) has starred in five Sondheim musicals

  • Audra McDonald (1)

    Audra McDonald has won six Tony Awards since 1994.

  • Obama greets the cast and crew of Hamilton musical, 2015

    The cast of Hamilton meets President Obama in 2015

  • Paris Sette-Takarazuka1930

    Japan's all-female Takarazuka Revue in a 1930 performance of "Parisette"

  • New York New Amsterdam Theatre 2003

    The Lion King on Broadway


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Musical theater Facts for Kids. Kiddle Encyclopedia.