to musical or not to musical...?

Leah M wrote:
>
> I was thinking about just this as I watched Faust last night.
> The whole first act I was thinking "Y'know, if this was a
> play it would either be ten minuets long or it would have to
> say a great deal more than this thing is saying."

It was saying it. Musically. That's the key difference.

Joseph Kerman described it beautifully, and defined as clearly as anyone exactly what "opera" is: an artform where the music is the primary articulating element. Plays are more about text, and I would venture that musicals are predominantly about songs (I base this on the fact that the earliest musicals were more or less what the modern crop of musicals are: a collection of popular, well-known songs strung together on a pretty flimsy storyline. With time, they grew into more-or-less operatically inspired beasts. But it's interesting to note that the wheel has now come full circle... back to the revue-sical).

> By about
> the third act I was so caught up in the pretty frocks and the
> swirling music and Bruce Martin's amazing voice that all was
> forgiven

Bruce is amazing. I had the pleasure of standing beside him onstage during Batavia, and he's a force to be reckoned with. He's in pretty good physical shape too, for a man in his sixties.

> I have to say also that the setting up for the crazy house
> Act was worth the ticket price by it's self (thanks Simon),
> it was one of the most disturbing and effective pieces of
> theatre I was ever seen.

How much of that was to do with the music? :o)

> "We've got to get going, Faust, time is up" over and over and
> over again with slightly different notes each time. The whole
> scene, if it was "straight" theatre, would have taken two
> minutes instead of twenty or a lot more would have to have
> gone into it.

And one of the major challenges in staging opera is to make the above work effectively as theatre as well as music. That this occurs so infrequently says less about the form itself than it does about the people paid to produce it.

> BUT, when I saw Assasins onstage at Playlovers years ago
> (first time I ever saw the Great DM perform) I was completely
> entranced, loved it, because it was SAYING something,

And you heard what it had to say for a number of important reasons. Firstly, it was the product of an artistic era (and mindset) that demanded more of its artists than that of Gounod's era. Not just nice tunes and fetching frocks... but substance and intellect.

Secondly, Sondheim - for all that's he's an irresistible tune-smith - is just as concerned with text as he is with melody, and consequently gives each equal weight.

Thirdly, Assassins was sung in contemporary American English, and consequently gave an immediacy to us as English-speakers than Gounod's antiquated French ever could.

> I think that musicals need to be appreciated in a completely
> different way to straight theatre. I look for certain things
> in a piece of theatre, I want it to teach me something or
> make me think about something in a different way, or I want
> it to make me laugh. I want to be involved, I want to care
> about the characters. I can't apply the same requirements I
> have of straight theatre to musicals, but those are the only
> requirements I know.

Maybe you're not seeing the right ones. Maybe Sondheim is more your bag than R&H. Maybe as an opera-goer you'd be better off sticking to modern opera, or to quasi-fringe repertoire like Britten and Janacek.

(Although it'd be a long time between drinks... especially in Perth).

> In other words, I don't know what I am supposed to be looking
> for. My comment above about musicals not being done well,
> might be the fact that I don't know what "well" actually is.

I personally think the biggest problem is that many of the people being paid good money to produce the stuff don't know what "well" is either.



dm.