The Popular and the Sacred: Nineteenth century American Theater
Elite Escape: Music in the Theater
The American musical theater in the nineteenth century provided an elitist escape from the realities of everyday American life. Musicals often incorporated elements of elite European culture in addition to traditionally American elements. Considered both popular and elite for the majority of the nineteenth century, Americans felt free to change and alter musical presentations to suit their needs.
Italian opera and other European productions were not exempted from American alteration. Americans claimed them as part of their culture and, during the nineteenth century, nothing was too sacred to be altered to fit Americans desires. The most common alteration to musical theater from Europe was translating the piece from the original language into English. Often, translating a work dealt not only with translating the language, but also the plot and other elements to make it fit better into American popular culture. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, this practice was changed as musical performances either moved into Hollywood or to the elite audiences along Broadway.
Comic operas became one of the most popular musical forms in America. H.M.S. Pinafore is one example of a comic opera that came to the Levy Opera House. Comic operas included elaborate sets and popular arias to attract mass audiences. The New York production machine at the end of the nineteenth century increased the design elements of these productions, allowing them to claim along with their Vaudevillian counterparts that they have a load of stuff - attractive to a community at the beginning of a fascination with industrialized commodities.
The elite elegance of the musicals and operas of the nineteenth century allowed audiences to virtually experience a luxurious life in the midst of the difficulties of industrialism. Great European composers such as Gilbert and Sullivan became precursors to the 1930's American composers in Hollywood. Just as musicals provided escape in the late nineteenth century, so too did musical films in the 1930's:
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Focusing on upper-class life, often on romance between dashing young military officers and lovely young women, the operettas provided Americans with a sense of beauty, elegance, and social order, a welcome diversion from the problems of modern life, much as Busby Berkeley's lavish musical films served common people during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
- Robert Toll, On with the Show! The first century of Show Business in America (199)
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