The famous Rogers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma! opened on Broadway a human lifetime ago back in 1943. I’ve heard more than one theater critic call it ‘the first modern musical’ or say words to the effect that Oklahoma ushered in a new era of musicals.
What exactly sets this particular musical apart from those that preceded it? I mean Broadway musicals date back to around the time the American Civil War ended. They’d been going on for many decades, how did Oklahoma depart from the established formula?
From what I’m reading, it sounds like it was the first (or one of the first) musicals that was more of a play in musical form rather than a play with some music numbers that aren’t really part of the story.
This musical, building on the innovations of the earlier Show Boat, epitomized the development of the “book musical”, a musical play in which the songs and dances are fully integrated into a well-made story, with serious dramatic goals, that is able to evoke genuine emotions other than amusement.[2] In addition, Oklahoma! features musical themes, or motifs, that recur throughout the work to connect the music and story.[3][page needed][4] A fifteen-minute “dream ballet” reflects Laurey’s struggle with her feelings about two men, Curly and Jud.
According to playwright and theatre writer Thomas Hischak, “Not only is Oklahoma! the most important of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals, it is also the single most influential work in the American musical theatre. … It is the first fully integrated musical play and its blending of song, character, plot and even dance would serve as the model for Broadway shows for decades.”[115] William Zinsser observed that Oklahoma! broke the old “musical comedy conventions”, with the songs “delving into character” and advancing the plot.
The simpler way to view it is that Oklahoma! was the first completely unified and integrated piece of musical theater, in the sense that all the songs and dance numbers are directed connected to and motivated by the central storyline, and contribute to telling a single coherent story. Musical theater prior to this was less formal; productions would have stories, but they’d be pretty loose, with many songs and dance numbers simply diversions, often opportunities for the headline star to belt out a signature number, whether or not it had anything to do with the story supposedly being told.
Of course, theater historians will quibble that the above is a pat simplification, that there were many pieces of musical theater which prefigured the approach for which Oklahoma! gets the credit, starting with Show Boat (not concidentally from the same creators). But Oklahoma! was the first to achieve unqualified smash success, showing that the form would be accepted by audiences.
It tickles me to think that Rodgers and Hammerstein are often derided for trading in musical theater cliches…when they were the groundbreaking ones of their day.
Oklahoma! was considered avant-garde from its first moments. Musicals up to then usually began with a huge singing and/or dancing chorus to set the scene (even Show Boat did that, for all its own innovations). But Oklahoma! raised its curtain on one old lady churning butter on her porch, with a lone male voice singing offstage. (“There’s a bright golden haze on the meadow…”)
Rodgers and Hammerstein went on to break even more conventions. I think that with Carousel,South Pacific, and The King And I, they were the first to kill off main or secondary romantic characters in musical theater, paving the way for West Side Story. And Carousel blurred the bounds between musical theater and opera, especially in its “Bench Scene” that moved seamlessly from dialogue to song, culminating in “If I Loved You.”
A more contemporary way of looking at it is that Pre-Oklahoma, musicals were very similar to Bollywood movies. The big song and dance numbers that interrupted the main story were at best, loosely connected to the plot.
The book and lyrics were by Hammerstein, but the music was by Jerome Kern. At the time Show Boat was written, Richard Rodgers was still working with Lorenz Hart.
A big difference is that, typically, opera contains no spoken-word dialog – in other words, dialog in most opera works is entirely sung. Musical theater, on the other hand, typically features both spoken and sung dialog.
Of course, there are exceptions in both forms.
This article describes this, as well as several other differences.
Funny that this thread should be posted today, since Mrs. H and I are currently watching the 1955 musical in bits and pieces (it’s long and dense, cut me a break). Some random thoughts:
Ado Annie’s song “I Can’t Say No” hasn’t aged well. It’s basically a teen girl/young woman revealing how much she loves the company of men, as if she needs to apologize for that. Slut-shaming, in a way. And also her name stresses me out. I’m used to women with two names – my stepsister is Helen Mae, FFS - but never with a nonsensical first name followed by a “real” name. Dafuq does Ado mean and where did it come from?
The costumes are ridiculous. No farm woman is going to go about her day in a hoopskirt, fine silk, a hat, etc. Good thing modern revivals go for a more “true” look of farm women of 1906. Equally ridiculous is the dialogue: it’s not how farm people in Oklahoma spoke in 1906. It’s how two guys in New York in the 1950s thought farm people in Oklahoma spoke in 1996. And finally, the voices are ridiculous; what made for a good voice in 1955 is considerably different than today.
I’m still not clear why Curly went to visit Jud Fry in the first act except to apparently antagonize him for some reason. If he was there to talk him out of taking Laurey to the Box Social, he went about it in a weird way (basically trying to convince him to commit suicide, it seems).
The official answer is “Ado” was derived from Lynn Rigg’s half-aunt Hannah Ada Riggs. A lot of people think it’s also a play on “I do” or “Ah do” since she has a hard time saying no.
You saw what a box social was later in that act: a girl makes up a box lunch, and guys bid on it for charity, the winner having the privilege of eating lunch with the girl. It was supposed to be all people of a similar social class, so the dirty hired man Jud Fry was an interloper, and no decent girl would want to spend time with him.
eta: I think a lot of the clothing that day was because it was a special day, not a working day.
They called them “comic operas” to distinguish them from operettas, which might also be comic but which were closer to operas in the ratio of music to dialog, and the rigor of the singing demands.
I played trombone in the pit orchestra for Oklahoma! in high school. I went through that musical probably a hundred times during rehearsal. There are some lines in that song that raised my eyebrows even as a teen.
“Every time I lose a wrasslin’ match, I get the funny feeling that I won.”
Wonderful message for the boys in the audience.
At the same time, there’s something refreshing about a woman singing that she experiences and enjoys sex.
Still I have fond memories of that musical and I had no idea it was so groundbreaking. And to this day I can’t hear the name of the state “Oklahoma” without bursting into song.
Is that the same as light opera? I’m on the mailing list of a few local theaters that have music that I like and other things that I don’t attend like comedians, ballet and light opera. “Light Opera” seems to my possibly ignorant eyes as just a modern musical.
Neither can the people of Oklahoma, because Oklahoma! was made the official state song in 1953.
Light opera is characterised mostly by the fact that the stories have a happy ending. Also, the productions tend to be shorter than traditional opera and may contain some dialog.
But to me the thing that separates the modern musical from opera/operetta/light opera is the integration of dance into the story. Even with a show as groundbreaking as Showboat, the story seemed to stop for the dance numbers. IMHO you could strip the dances out of Showboat and have an excellent show that’s simply staged. You can’t do that with Oklahoma!.
I saw that the other day, and it’s only loosely about the musical Oklahoma! Mostly it’s about how Lorenz Hart comes from the Broadway premiere knowing that Richard Rodgers stopped working with him, and the very first work Rodgers made with Oscar Hammerstein II was this groundbreaking, sure-to-be-a-hit show.