The Black Crook is considered to be the first piece of
musical theatreMusical theatre is a form of theatre combining music, songs, spoken dialogue and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...
that conforms to the modern notion of a "
book musicalThe book musical is a form of musical theatre that became the dominant production form during the mid-20th century period that is now considered the "golden age" of the Broadway musical...
". The book is by Charles M. Barras (1826-1873), an American playwright. The music is mostly adaptations, but some new songs were composed for the play, notably "March of the Amazons" by Giuseppe Operti, and "You Naughty, Naughty Men", with music by George Bickwell and lyrics by Theodore Kennick.
It opened on September 12, 1866 at the 3,200-seat
Niblo's GardenNiblo's Garden was a former New York theatre on Broadway, near Prince Street. It was established in 1828 under the name of the Sans Souci and was later the property of William Niblo. The large theatre was twice burned and rebuilt...
on
BroadwayBroadway Theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, is the theatre associated with the 40 large professional theaters with 500 seats or more located in the Theatre District, New York in Manhattan, New York City...
, New York City and ran for a record-breaking 474 performances.
The Black Crook is considered to be the first piece of
musical theatreMusical theatre is a form of theatre combining music, songs, spoken dialogue and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...
that conforms to the modern notion of a "
book musicalThe book musical is a form of musical theatre that became the dominant production form during the mid-20th century period that is now considered the "golden age" of the Broadway musical...
". The book is by Charles M. Barras (1826-1873), an American playwright. The music is mostly adaptations, but some new songs were composed for the play, notably "March of the Amazons" by Giuseppe Operti, and "You Naughty, Naughty Men", with music by George Bickwell and lyrics by Theodore Kennick.
It opened on September 12, 1866 at the 3,200-seat
Niblo's GardenNiblo's Garden was a former New York theatre on Broadway, near Prince Street. It was established in 1828 under the name of the Sans Souci and was later the property of William Niblo. The large theatre was twice burned and rebuilt...
on
BroadwayBroadway Theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, is the theatre associated with the 40 large professional theaters with 500 seats or more located in the Theatre District, New York in Manhattan, New York City...
, New York City and ran for a record-breaking 474 performances. It was then toured extensively for decades and revived on Broadway in 1870-71, 1871-72 and many more times after that. It was originally produced by the theatre's manager,
William WheatleyWilliam Wheatley was an American Stage actor, born in New York City. He was the son of Frederick Wheatley, once a favorite actor in Baltimore and Philadelphia. His mother, who died in 1873, was an admirable and a justly renowned actress...
, who also directed the piece. The cast also included Annie Kemp Bowler, Charles Morton, Marie Bonfanti, J.W. Blaisdell, E.B. Holmes, Millie Cavendish and George Boniface.
This production gave America claim to having originated the
musicalMusical theatre is a form of theatre combining music, songs, spoken dialogue and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...
.
The Black Crook is considered a prototype of the modern musical in that its popular songs and dances are interspersed throughout a unifying play and performed by the actors.
The British production of
The Black Crook, which opened at the
Alhambra TheatreThe Alhambra was a popular theatre and music hall located on the east side of Leicester Square, in the West End of London. It was established in 1854 and demolished in 1936. Its name was adopted by many other British music hall theatres located elsewhere in the metropolis, in Bradford, in Hull and...
on December 23, 1872, was an
opera bouffeOpéra bouffe is a genre of late 19th century French operetta, closely associated with Jacques Offenbach, who produced many of them at the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens that gave its name to the form....
version based on the same French source material, with new music by
Frederic ClayFrederic Emes Clay was an English composer known principally for his music written for the stage. Clay, a great friend of Sir Arthur Sullivan's, wrote four comic operas with W. S...
and Georges Jacobi. The author, Harry Paulton, starred as Dandelion, opposite the comedienne
Kate SantleyKate Santley was an American-born English actress, singer, comedienne, and theatre manager. Her brother was the English baritone, Sir Charles Santley, famous in Wagner's Flying Dutchman among other roles.-Musical theatre career:...
, who had appeared in the 1871-72 Broadway revival.
The Black Crook was also produced in 1882 in
Birmingham, AlabamaBirmingham is the largest city in the state of Alabama in the United States. It is the county seat of Jefferson County and includes part of Shelby County. According to a 2007 estimate, the city had a population of 229,800 The Birmingham-Hoover Metropolitan Area, as of the 2008 census estimates,...
as the opening-night attraction at O'Brien's Opera House.
Background
The Black Crook was born when a dramatic group and Parisian ballet troupe joined forces in New York. Henry C. Jarrett and Harry Palmer had hired the ballet troupe to perform at the New York Academy of Music, but the troupe was left without an engagement when a fire destroyed the Academy. They approached Wheatley at Niblo's Garden to see if he could use them. Wheatley offered them a chance to participate in a
musical "spectacle"An extravaganza is a literary or musical work characterized by freedom of style and structure and usually containing elements of burlesque, pantomime, music hall and parody. It sometimes also has elements of cabaret, circus, revue, variety, vaudeville and mime...
by combining their ballet forces with Barras's melodrama.
In operas, even comic operas with dialogue like
The Magic FluteThe Magic Flute is an opera in two acts composed in 1791 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to a libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder...
, the principal singers leave the dancing to the ballet troupe. In
burlesqueBurlesque is a humorous theatrical entertainment involving parody and sometimes grotesque exaggeration. In 20th century America, the form became associated with a variety show in which striptease is the chief attraction.-Etymology and early history:...
,
music hallMusic hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment which was popular between 1850 and 1960. The term can refer to:# A particular form of variety entertainment involving a mixture of popular song, comedy and speciality acts...
and
vaudevilleVaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
, there is little or no unifying story, just a series of sketches. So
The Black Crook, with song and dance for everyone, was an evolutionary step. The production was a staggering five-and-a-half hours long, but despite its length, it ran for a record-breaking 474 performances and exceeded a record-shattering one million dollars. The same year,
The Black Domino/Between You, Me and the Post was the first show to call itself a "musical comedy."
In the late 1860s, as post-Civil War business boomed, there was a sharp increase in the number of working and middle class people in New York, and these more affluent people sought entertainment. Theaters became more popular, and Niblo's Garden, which had formerly hosted opera, began to offer light comedy.
The Black Crook was followed by
The White Fawn (1868),
Le Barbe Blue (1868) and
Evangeline (1873).
The production included state-of-the-art special effects, including a "transformation scene" that converted a rocky grotto into a fairyland throne room in full view of the audience. A scantily-clad female dancing chorus of 100 ballerinas in skin-colored tights, choreographed in semi-classical style by David Costa, was a big draw. It was respectable enough for the middle-class audience, but very daring and controversial enough to attract a great deal of press attention. The show's prima ballerina, Marie Bonfanti, became the a star in New York.
An apparently similar show from six years earlier,
The Seven Sisters (1860), which also ran for a very long run of 253 performances, is now lost and forgotten. It also included special effects and scene changes. Theatre historian
John KenrickJohn Kenrick is an American author, teacher and theatre and film historian. Kenrick teaches musical theatre history at New York University and lectures frequently on the subject. His 2008 book Musical Theatre: A History is a comprehensive history of musical theatre from ancient times to the...
suggests that
The Black Crook's greater success resulted from changes brought about by the Civil War: First, respectable women, having had to work during the war, no longer felt tied to their homes and could attend the theatre, although many did so heavily veiled. This substantially increased the potential audience for popular entertainment. Second, America's railroad system had improved during the war, making it feasible for large productions to tour.
Synopsis
The musical is set in 1600 in the Harz Mountains of Germany. It incorporates elements from Goethe's
Faust, Weber's
Der FreischützDer Freischütz is an opera in three acts by Carl Maria von Weber to a libretto by Friedrich Kind. It is considered the first important German Romantic opera, especially in its national identity and stark emotionality. Its plot was taken from German folk legend and many of its tunes were inspired...
, and other well-known works.
Evil, wealthy Count Wolfenstein seeks to marry the lovely village girl, Amina. With the help of Amina's scheming foster mother Barbara, the Count arranges for Amina's fiancé, Rodolphe, an impoverished artist, to fall into the hands of Hertzog, an ancient, crook-backed master of black magic. Hertzog has made a pact with the Devil (Zamiel, "The Arch Fiend"): he can live forever if he provides Zamiel with a fresh soul every New Year's Eve. As Rodolphe is led to this horrible fate, he escapes, discovers a buried treasure, and saves a dove. The dove magically turns out to be Stalacta, Fairy Queen of the Golden Realm, who is pretending to be a bird. The grateful Queen rescues Rudolph by bringing him to fairyland and then reuniting him with his beloved Amina. The Count is defeated, demons drag the evil Hertzog into hell, and Rodolphe and Amina live happily ever after.
Musical numbers
Act I
- Early in the Morning ..... Carline
- You Naughty, Naughty Men .... Carline
- March of the Amazons .... Chorus
Act II
- Dare I Tell
- Flow On, Silver Stream ....... Stalacta
- (The) Power of Love ....... Stalacta
External links