Editing Musical theatre (section)

=== 1850s to 1880s ===
[[File:Circa-1879-DOyly-Carte-HMS-Pinafore-from-Library-of-Congress2.jpg|thumb|upright|Poster, c. 1879]]
Around 1850, the French composer [[Hervé (composer)|Hervé]] was experimenting with a form of comic musical theatre he called [[opérette]].<ref name=Lubbock>[[Mark Lubbock|Lubbock, Mark]]. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/937354 "The Music of 'Musicals'"]. ''[[The Musical Times]]'', vol. 98, no. 1375 (September 1957), pp. 483–485, accessed 17 August 2010</ref> The best known composers of [[operetta]] were [[Jacques Offenbach]] from the 1850s to the 1870s and [[Johann Strauss II]] in the 1870s and 1880s.<ref name=KenrickShort/> Offenbach's fertile melodies, combined with his librettists' witty satire, formed a model for the musical theatre that followed.<ref name=Lubbock/> Adaptations of the French operettas (played in mostly bad, risqué translations), [[Victorian burlesque|musical burlesques]], music hall, pantomime and burletta dominated the London musical stage into the 1870s.<ref name=Bond>[[Jessie Bond|Bond, Jessie]]. [https://www.gsarchive.net/books/bond/intro.html Introduction to ''The Life and Reminiscences of Jessie Bond''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120421204843/https://www.gsarchive.net/books/bond/intro.html |date=2012-04-21 }}, reprinted at ''The Gilbert and Sullivan Archive'', accessed March 4, 2011</ref> 

In America, mid-19th century musical theatre entertainments included crude [[variety show|variety revue]], which eventually developed into [[vaudeville]], [[minstrel show]]s, which soon crossed the Atlantic to Britain, and Victorian burlesque, first popularized in the US by British troupes.<ref name=KenrickShort/> [[Kurt Gänzl]] considers ''The Doctor of Alcantara'' (1862), with music composed by [[Julius Eichberg]] and a book and lyrics by Benjamin E Woolf, to be the "first American musical",<ref>[[Kurt Gänzl|Gänzl, Kurt]]. [http://operetta-research-center.org/first-american-musical-doctor-alcantara-1862 "The First American Musical: ''The Doctor of Alcantara'' (1862)"], ''Encyclopedia of the Musical Theatre'', via ''Operetta Research Center'', 15 June 2020</ref> though he also points to even earlier works.<ref>[[Kurt Gänzl|Gänzl, Kurt]]. [https://kurtofgerolstein.blogspot.com/2018/06/the-black-crook-or-how-to-invent-history.html "'''The Black Crook'', or How to Invent History"], Kurt of Gerolstein, June 20, 2018</ref> A hugely successful musical entertainment that premiered in New York in 1866, ''[[The Black Crook]]'', combined dance and some original music that helped to tell the story. The spectacular production, famous for its skimpy costumes, ran for a record-breaking 474 performances.<ref>Reside, Doug. [http://www.nypl.org/blog/2011/06/02/musical-month-black-crook "Musical of the Month: ''The Black Crook''"], [[New York Public Library for the Performing Arts]], June 2, 2011, accessed June 21, 2018</ref> The same year, ''The Black Domino/Between You, Me and the Post'' was the first show to call itself a "musical comedy". In 1874, ''[[Evangeline (1874 musical)|Evangeline or The Belle of Arcadia]]'', by [[Edward E. Rice]] and [[J. Cheever Goodwin]], based loosely on [[Henry Wadsworth Longfellow|Longfellow’s]] ''[[Evangeline]]'', with an original American story and music, opened successfully in New York and was revived in Boston, New York, and in repeated tours.<ref name=Miller>Miller, Scott. [https://www.newlinetheatre.com/musicalcomedy.html "Curtain Up, Light the Lights: 1874–1900"], New Line Theatre, 2008, accessed 7 July 2024</ref> Comedians [[Edward Harrigan]] and [[Tony Hart (theater)|Tony Hart]] produced and starred in musicals on Broadway between 1878 (''The Mulligan Guard Picnic'') and 1885. These musical comedies featured characters and situations taken from the everyday life of New York's lower classes. They starred high quality singers ([[Lillian Russell]], [[Vivienne Segal]] and [[Fay Templeton]]) instead of the ladies of questionable repute who had starred in earlier musical forms. In 1879, ''The Brook'' by Nate Salsbury was another national success with contemporary American dance styles and an American story about "members of an acting company taking a trip down a river ... with lots of obstacles and mishaps along the way".<ref name=Miller/>

As transportation improved, poverty in London and New York diminished, and street lighting made for safer travel at night, the number of patrons for the growing number of theatres increased enormously. Plays ran longer, leading to better profits and improved production values, and men began to bring their families to the theatre. The first musical theatre piece to exceed 500 consecutive performances was the French operetta ''[[The Chimes of Normandy]]'' in 1878 (705 performances).<ref name="dgillan.screaming.net"/><ref>Gänzl and Lamb, p. 356</ref> English [[comic opera]] adopted many of the successful ideas of European operetta, none more successfully than the series of more than a dozen long-running [[Gilbert and Sullivan]] comic operas, including ''[[H.M.S. Pinafore]]'' (1878) and ''[[The Mikado]]'' (1885).<ref name=Lubbock/> These were sensations on both sides of the Atlantic and in Australia and helped to raise the standard for what was considered a successful show.<ref name=WeAll>Kenrick, John. [http://www.musicals101.com/usafter.htm "G&S in the USA" at the musicals101 website] ''The Cyber Encyclopedia of Musical Theatre, TV and Film'' (2008). Retrieved on 4 May 2012.</ref> These shows were designed for family audiences, a marked contrast from the risqué burlesques, bawdy music hall shows and French operettas that sometimes drew a crowd seeking less wholesome entertainment.<ref name=Bond/> Only a few 19th-century musical pieces exceeded the run of ''The Mikado'', such as ''[[Dorothy (opera)|Dorothy]]'', which opened in 1886 and set a new record with a run of 931 performances. Gilbert and Sullivan's influence on later musical theatre was profound, creating examples of how to "integrate" musicals so that the lyrics and dialogue advanced a coherent story.<ref name=Jones10>Jones, 2003, [https://books.google.com/books?id=WqQH31qkYNoC&pg=PA9 pp. 10–11]</ref><ref>Bargainnier, Earl F. "W. S. Gilbert and American Musical Theatre", pp. 120–133, ''American Popular Music: Readings from the Popular Press'' by Timothy E. Scheurer, Popular Press, 1989 {{ISBN|0-87972-466-8}}</ref> Their works were [[Cultural influence of Gilbert and Sullivan#Musical theatre and comedy|admired and copied]] by early authors and composers of musicals in Britain<ref>[http://books.guardian.co.uk/authors/author/0,,-248,00.html PG Wodehouse (1881–1975)], guardian.co.uk, Retrieved on 21 May 2007</ref><ref>[http://home.lagrange.edu/arobinson/wodehousegilbert.htm "List of allusions to G&S in Wodehouse"], Home.lagrange.edu, accessed May 27, 2009</ref> and America.<ref name=WeAll/><ref>Meyerson, Harold and Ernest Harburg ''Who Put the Rainbow in the Wizard of Oz?: Yip Harburg, Lyricist'', pp. 15–17 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993); and Bradley, p. 9</ref>