Advice for getting into older musicals?

[borlechristian]

Posted: 5/3/20 at 3:33pm

I've been what i consider a theatre geek for about 4 years. I've listened to plenty of popular contemporary musicals, but i want to try and broaden my horizons, and listen to some older ones. The only "old" ones i've listened are les mis and into the woods. (not even that old) I want to be seen as more professional, and not as some theatre fan who only listens to new musicals. Any advice or musicals i should start with?

Thanks!

[imeldasturn]

Posted: 5/3/20 at 3:41pm

I'd say go watch pro-shots. There are official video recordings of most Sondheim musicals, although most of them are from the 70s to the 90s, so really not old at all. If I were you I'd watch the proshot of Sweeney Todd, recorded in 1982 with Angela Lansbury, George Hearn and Hal Prince's original direction.

If you want to get into real "older" musicals you can start with Rodgers & Hammerstein. There is a wonderful video recording of the last revival of The King and I with Kelli O'Hara, it's a must watch. And there's also one of the National Theatre production of Oklahoma! with Hugh Jackman. Some of them can be found easily on YouTube.

[borlechristian]

Posted: 5/3/20 at 3:54pm

imeldasturn said: "I'd say go watch pro-shots. There are official video recordings of most Sondheim musicals,although most of them are from the 70s to the 90s, so really not old at all. If I were you I'd watch the proshot of Sweeney Todd, recorded in 1982 with Angela Lansbury, George Hearn and Hal Prince's original direction.

If you want to get into real "older" musicals you can start with Rodgers & Hammerstein. There is a wonderful video recording of the last revival of The King and I with Kelli O'Hara, it's a must watch. And there's also one of the National Theatre production of Oklahoma! with Hugh Jackman. Some of them can be found easily on YouTube."

Thanks! hopefully i can find them

 

[Broadway61004]

Posted: 5/3/20 at 3:55pm

A great place to start would be looking at a list of all the Tony nominated Best Musicals. Obviously that's an extremely small sample size of the history of the musical and only covers the last 70 years, but it can be a great jumping off point to see what were some of the biggest new musicals at least in New York in the past 70 years. Many of them have film versions (either recorded stage productions or film adaptations) and most have cast recordings available, so are pretty easily accessible. But also, you can just start looking up some of the most famous composers and familiarizing yourself with their works: Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Gilbet and Sullivan, Rodgers and Hammerstein (and Hart), Kander and Ebb, Cy Coleman, just to name a few.

[borlechristian]

Posted: 5/3/20 at 4:11pm

Great! Hopefully most of them are on apple music

[JBroadway]

Posted: 5/3/20 at 4:49pm

Like Broadway61004, a lot of golden age musicals have film adaptations that are relatively faithful to the originals, at least in spirit. In many cases, they even cast the original stars. Some of these films have arguably become more iconic than the original stage versions. So they are definitely a good avenue to explore that era. 

[breakalegbway]

Posted: 5/4/20 at 4:54pm

I would definitely start out with some of the favorites: Sound of Music, Oklahoma, Funny Girl, etc. These are all really great classic shows and are good ones to start off with. If you like these, look into more from Rodgers & Hammerstein. Many of their shows have movie adaptations / cast recordings that are easy to find. Hope this helps!

[chrishuyen]

Posted: 5/4/20 at 9:16pm

I'd have to agree with watching filmed versions or pro shots of older shows.  The music style is fairly different from modern musicals, so it was a bit more difficult for me to get into just listening to the scores, but being able to see the context helped a lot.  For both R&H and Sondheim stuff, knowing exactly why they were revolutionary and what the general artform was like at the time also helped me, though it depends how much research you'd want to put in.  If you're interested in Sondheim specifically, I'd recommend the podcast Putting It Together, which breaks down each show song by song (they just finished the Company season)!

All of the cast recordings should be on Apple Music, though due to physical limitations of the time, they can also be heavily truncated, which I think is another reason watching the film of the shows help.

[MollyJeanneMusic]

Posted: 5/4/20 at 9:18pm

Some of the older musicals have great movies, too.  Lots of Rodgers and Hammerstein shows have movies, Funny Girl's a classic, The Music Man is great.  Hello, Dolly's coming to Disney+ later this month, too, and that's a great movie, if you overlook the whole "Barbra Streisand's 25 playing a widow" thing.

[ARTc3]

Posted: 5/5/20 at 2:32am

I would approach learning musicals by composer. Start by picking a favorite composer (perhaps Sondheim), and slowly make your way through his body of work. You can even listen chronologically. Expand your knowledge by choosing another composer. In time, you'll have listened to many musicals and have a better understanding of the artists who created the music: composer, lyricists, singers, etc.

[AuroratheGeek]

Posted: 5/5/20 at 6:40pm

I recently started listening to a podcast called Jim & Tomic's Musical Theater Happy Hour which might be really helpful for you! Each episode discusses a different show. That might give you a good sense of "major" musicals". Then you can find a recording of it and then listen to the podcast!

 

Personally, I've been doing a listen on Spotify of all of the Best Musical Tony nominees chronologically. I just look them up on Wikipedia.

 

But I agree with many others! Starting with some Rogers & Hammerstein (Sound of Music or Oklahoma), some Sondheim (perhaps the original Sweeney Todd), and something like Hello, Dolly or Fiddler on the Roof are great places to start, and all wonderful shows!

[Dollypop]

Posted: 5/6/20 at 8:31pm

YouTube has the entire Bernadette Peter's DOLLY available. It's the REAL show and not that pathetic hatchet job that 20th Century Fox did. (It's the story of a woman who doesn't want the parade to pass her by and on stage she winds up leading the parade down 14th Street. In the film That Streisand Woman wails away while the never-ending parade does, indeed, pass her by. The whole film disgusts me.)