One of my idle pastimes is what might be called a geography of aesthetics: matching art forms to the countries in which they flourished best. For drama, it would be England; for painting, France; for opera, Italy; for lyric poetry, Germany; for ballet, Russia. And the United States? Jazz, of course, but ranking just behind is musical theater, now honored by the Library of America in a two-volume boxed set of sixteen plays, American Musicals.
Like jazz, musicals resulted from the leavening of an Old World tradition with the vulgar vitality of the New, in this case, the operetta with the minstrel-cum-vaudeville revue. Above all, the new form embraced America: familiar locales instead of the Ruritanian fantasy lands of, say, Babes in Toyland or The Merry Widow; the exuberance of Florenz Ziegfeld’s annual Follies (and its many imitators, like George White’s Scandals and Earl Carroll’s Vanities) united with the craft of light opera.
Musicals resulted from the leavening of an Old World tradition with the vulgar vitality of the New
The first milestone toward such a synthesis came in 1927 with Show Boat. The show’s script and lyrics were written by Oscar Hammerstein II, already accomplished in the operetta tradition (his résumé included Rose Marie and The Desert Song). The composer was Jerome Kern, whose previous collaborations with the lyricist P. G. Wodehouse and the librettist Guy Bolton were precursors of this new-style musical. (To complete the
