The musical theatre : a celebration /
Alan Jay Lerner.
- 240 pages, 16 pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 27 cm.
Includes index.
Bibliography: p. 237.
Introduction -- The Founding Father -- The City that Danced -- England -- The Land of the Free -- 'America's Franz Schubert' -- The Master -- Lyrics By ... -- Oscar Hammerstein II -- The Early Days -- The Composers -- G.G. -- Rodgers and Hart -- Cole -- I Want to be Happy -- Dietz and Schwartz -- 'Destiny's Tot' -- Postscript to the Twenties -- The Depression -- Porgy and Bess -- A Muesli of Musicals -- Oklahoma! -- From Lyricism to Reality: The Forties -- One Extended Season: The Fifties -- The Great Rebellion: The Sixties -- Sound and Fury: The Seventies to the Present.
This is the fascinating story of 150 years of the musical theatre by one of the great legends of Broadway. Filled with inside stories and backstage anecdotes, this book traces the fascinating development of the musical, which had its origins in Offenbach's Vienna, came to Gilbert and Sullivan's London, and finally landed in America, where it found its finest flowering.