From_American_Dream_To_Rock_Opera

From American Dream To Rock Opera The Search for New Direction in the musical. From the ‘American Dream’ to the ‘Rock-Opera’. 1950 to 1978 were low-spirited ones for the musical. American musical theatre had been showing signs of exhaustion. This most seemingly anti-intellectual of genres carries its own ‘ideological project’. Before this, the musicals not only exhibited singing and dancing; they were about singing and dancing, explaining the magnitude of that experience. They not only gave the most intense pleasure to their audience but also supplied the justification for that pleasure. The pop songs of the day were the songs from the shows. With the increase in number of radio stations and the availability of portable radios recorded music became the music of the masses. With the arrival of the Beatles in 1964, Rock music exploded across the land sending other musical trends into hibernation! The occasional attempt to break out of the old moulds were unsuccessful and led nowhere. They showed inadequacies; being unmelodic and formless. With rare exceptions, audiences rarely left the theatre singing the show tunes. Rock and roll couldn’t be assimilated in a dramatic structure. The songs didn’t tell a story. If rock and roll was used it would mean songs did musical, theatre, story, new, music, audience, about, musicals, broadway, show, one, been, success, life, west, stage, rock, became, audiences, lyrics, hair, british, years, wrote, world, work, theatrical, social, singing, side, shows, play, people, now, misérables