什麼是音樂劇

一種戲劇表演形式，具有激發情感，給人樂趣的特點，情節簡單但不落俗套，伴有音樂、舞蹈和對白。音樂劇可以追溯到18和19世紀的體裁，如敘事歌劇、歌唱劇和喜歌劇。1866年的《黑色彎柄杖》通常被認爲是第一部音樂喜劇作品，它不僅引起低級歌舞表演的主辦者、也引起一些赫伯特歌劇和嚴肅戲劇的贊助人的注意。赫伯特、富林（R. Friml）和龍白克將一種輕歌劇形式帶到美國，後來成爲主要來源。科漢是該體裁全盛時期的代表人物，在1920～1930年代進入最鼎盛時代。克恩（J. Kern）與艾拉.蓋希文（參閱Gershwin, George、Gershwin, Ira）、波特、羅傑斯、漢莫斯坦和阿爾倫。克恩和漢莫斯坦《畫舫璇宮》（1927）可能是首部完全使用音樂配合敘述的音樂劇；後來的音樂劇結構緊湊，例如︰羅傑茲與漢莫斯坦的《奧克拉荷馬！》（1943）和《南太平洋》（1949）。該體裁隨勒納、洛伊和伯恩斯坦的作品進入繁榮時期，但1960年代後期開始衰退，分別走向不同的方向，比如說拉格尼（G. Ragni）、拉多（J. Rado）和麥克德莫特（G. MacDermott）的搖滾音樂劇《毛髮》（1967），坎德爾（J. Kander）和艾比（F. Ebb）的《酒店》（1966），桑德海姆的《斯維內.託德》（1979），斯瓦茨（Stephen Swartz）的《神的意味》（1971），勞埃.韋伯和提姆.萊斯的《萬世巨星》（1971），哈姆利什（M. Hamlisch）和克雷本（E. Kleban）的《歌舞線上》（1975），波利爾（A. Boublil）和斯昆伯格（C.-M. Sch?nberg）的《悲慘世界》（1985），和拉森（J. Larson）的《吉屋出租》（1995）。

musical (comedy)

Theatrical production, normally sentimental and amusing, with a simple but distinctive plot, that offers music and dancing as well as spoken dialogue. Its roots can be traced to such 18th- and 19th-century genres as ballad opera, singspiel, and opéra comique, in which dialogue is mostly spoken. The Black Crook (1866), often called the first musical comedy, attracted patrons of opera and serious drama as well as those of burlesque shows. V. Herbert, R. Friml, and S. Romberg brought a form of operetta to the U.S. that became an essential source. George M. Cohan ushered in the genre's heyday, and in the 1920s and '30s it entered its richest period with the works of J. Kern, G. and I. Gershwin (see George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin), C. Porter, R. Rodgers, O. Hammerstein, and H. Arlen. Kern and Hammerstein's Show Boat (1927) was perhaps the first musical to employ music thoroughly integrated with the narrative; later tightly constructed musicals included Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! (1943) and South Pacific (1949). The genre flourished with the works of A.J. Lerner, F. Loewe, and Leonard Bernstein, but began to decline in the late 1960s, by which time musicals had begun to diverge in many different directions, as exemplified by Gerome Ragni, James Rado, and Galt MacDermott's rock musical Hair (1967), John Kander and Fred Ebb's Cabaret (1966), S. Sondheim's Sweeney Todd (1979), Stephen Swartz's Godspell (1971), Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's Jesus Christ Superstar (1971), Marvin Hamlisch and Edward Kleban's A Chorus Line (1975), Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Sch?nberg's Les Misérables (1985), and Jonathan Larson's Rent (1995).