Description
Book SynopsisAddresses a variety of specific themes in musicals that serve this general function: fairy tale and fantasy, idealism and inspiration, gender and sexuality, and relationships, among others. This work considers three overlapping genres that are central to the projection of personal identity: operetta, movie musicals, and operatic musicals.
Trade Review"Brainy [and] meticulous... The bedrock idea in The American Musical and the Performance of Personal Identity is that the self is, on some level, a performance--and isn't a performance incomplete when there's no audience? Other people provide the receptivity and feedback that allow one to become a certain person, rather than another. Character is--to revert to that inspiring buzzword--collaboration."--Celia Wren, American Theatre "The American Musical and the Performance of Personal Identity is an insightful contribution to current scholarship on musical theatre. It integrates theoretical approaches based in both musicology and audience reception, and applies these approaches across the media of film and theatre. In so doing, it offers a transferable, revealing methodology for similarly sophisticated analyses of the role of musical theatre in American culture."--Diana Calderazzo, Theatre Journal "With an engaging and accessible style, Knapp examines the ways American national and personal identity are revealed and defined through the evolving twentieth-century genres of stage and film musicals."--Arthur Pritchard, Studies in Musical Theater "Raymond Knapp has an extraordinarily perceptive ear. As he surveys the history of the American musical, he hears things--important things, revelatory things--that earlier writers ... have missed."--Edward Green, Popular Music and Society "Knapp's writing is lively and elegant, his knowledge and research are exceedingly wide-ranging, and his observations are incisive and on-the-mark, often very funny, and frequently astonishing in their acuity."--Stacy Wolf, Modern Drama "The author offers excellent in-depth treatments of 31 shows, including stage, film, and television musicals."--Choice "Raymond Knapp has an extraordinarily perceptive ear. As he surveys the history of the American musical, he hears things--important things, revelatory things--that earlier writers who have attempted, systematically, to traverse this vast territory have missed. Hardly a page goes by without a 'Gee, I didn't realize that' moment... One of the loveliest features of these books is the generosity of the musical examples. Coordinated with the text are hundreds of musical excerpts which Princeton University Press has made available to readers through easy downloading from the Internet... It is clear that there is much to praise about Raymond Knapp's work, beginning with his vast knowledge of the subject and his infectious enthusiasm for it."--Edward Green, Popular Music and Society
Table of ContentsList of Figures ix Explanatory Note about Audio Examples xi Acknowledgments xiii Entr'acte 1 Part One: PERSONAL GENRES 15 Chapter 1: The Viennese Connection: Franz Leharand American Operetta 17 The Merry Widow (1907) 20 Naughty Marietta (1910) 31 Little Mary Sunshine (1959) 40 A Little Night Music (1973) 50 Chapter 2: The Movie Musical 65 Singin' in the Rain (film, 1952) 70 Stormy Weather (film, 1943) and Bamboozled (film, 2000) 79 Meet Me in St. Louis (film, 1944) 94 Moulin Rouge (film, 2001) and Chicago (film, 2002) 102 Part Two: PERSONAL THEMES 119 Chapter 3: Fairy Tales and Fantasy 121 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (animated film, 1937) 125 The Wizard of Oz (film, 1939) 131 Mary Poppins (film, 1964) 141 Into the Woods (1987) 150 Chapter 4: Idealism and Inspiration 164 Camelot (1960) 170 Man of La Mancha (1965) 180 The Scarlet Pimpernel (1997) 189 Once More, with Feeling (television, 2001) 196 Chapter 5: Gender and Sexuality 205 Annie Get Your Gun (1946) 209 Gypsy (1959) 215 Sweet Charity (1966) 228 The Rocky Horror Picture Show (film, 1975) 240 Hedwig and the Angry Inch (1998; film, 2001) 252 Chapter 6: Relationships 264 Lady in the Dark (1941) 266 Kiss Me, Kate (1948) 273 My Fair Lady (1956) 284 Company (1970) 293 Passion (1994) 303 Epilogue 311 Chapter 7: Operatic Ambitions and Beyond 313 Candide (1956) 317 Sweeney Todd (1979) 331 Evita (1979) 342 Appendix: Additional Resources 357 Notes 377 Bibliography 433 Index 449
