Broadway musicals of the 1900s saw the emergence of George M. Cohan and his quintessentially American musical comedies which featured contemporary American stories, ragtime-flavored songs, and a tongue-in-cheek approach to musical comedy conventions. But when the Austrian import The Merry Widow opened in 1907, waltz-driven operettas became all the rage.
In The Complete Book of 1900s Broadway Musicals, Dan Dietz surveys every single book musical that opened during the decade. Each musical has its own entry which features the following:
Plot summary
Cast members
Creative team
Song lists
Opening and closing dates
Number of performances
Critical commentary
Film adaptations, recordings, and published scripts, when applicable
Numerous appendixes include a chronology of book musicals by season; chronology of revues; chronology of revivals of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas; a selected discography; filmography; published scripts; Black musicals; long and short runs; and musicals based on comic strips. The most comprehensive reference work on Broadway musicals of the 1900s, this book is an invaluable and significant resource for all scholars, historians, and fans of Broadway musicals.
The Complete Book of 1900s Broadway Musicals
Description
Author Description
Dan Dietz was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Off-Broadway Musicals, 1910-2007: Casts, Credits, Songs, Critical Reception and Performance Data of More Than 1,800 Shows (2010), which was selected as one of the outstanding reference sources of 2011 by the American Library Association. He is also the author of Rowman & Littlefield’s decade-by-decade references on Broadway Musicals, from The Complete Book of 1910s Broadway Musicals to The Complete Book of 2010s Broadway Musicals.