The Black Crook
| The Black Crook | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Musical dates | |
| Title: | The Black Crook |
| Original language: | English |
| Book: | Charles M. Barras |
| Premiere: | September 12, 1866 |
| Place of premiere: | Niblo's Garden on Broadway New York |
The Black Crook ( English, roughly "The villain in black") is considered to be one of the first coherent American musicals . However, it is more of a comic opera or piece of equipment (the American version Extravaganza is called).
premiere
The premiere was on September 12, 1866 in Niblo's Garden on New York's Broadway . Despite a length of five and a half hours, it reached the record number of 475 performances. The text book came from Charles M. Barras (1826–1873). The music was put together from other works, with some newly composed interludes such as the “March of the Amazons” by Giuseppe Operti and the show stopper “You Naughty, Naughty Men” by George Bickwell and Theodore Kennick.
subject
The title refers to the main character, a magician in a black robe. The adventurous, complicated plot of the piece is based on Fauststoff and is set in the German Harz Mountains around 1600. There are echoes of Carl Maria von Weber's Der Freischütz (1821) and Parisian melodramas in the style of Pixérécourt .
Stylistic classification
Judging by the theater bill, the play is not much different from the Feerien , which were performed in Paris and London at the same time. The star of the evening was the dancer Marie Bonfanti , Ruth St. Denis' teacher . For New York standards the effort was obviously extraordinary. On stage was a female corps de ballet , which supposedly came from Paris and consisted of 70 dancers - a pre-form of the showgirls that later became famous in the Ziegfeld Follies . It is said that this piece made the Parisian dance cancan popular in the city of New York. This resulted in a connection between the modern cabaret forms of music hall , US vaudeville and revue , in which there was no coherent plot, with older theater traditions.
effect
The 1872 London version of The Black Crook at the Alhambra Theater was based on the same material with new music. The piece remained in the New York repertoire in numerous new versions until around 1930. In literature it is usually presented as an important step towards an originally American musical theater.
literature
- Sheridan Morley: Spread A Little Happiness. The first 100 years of the British musical . Thames and Hudson, New York 1987, ISBN 0-500-01398-5 .