15 - ‘Something borrowed, something blue’: the marriage of the musical and Europe

Summary

For those who embrace the musical as an American form – or at least as a product primarily of the English-speaking world – the phrase ‘European musical’ can seem an oxymoron. Although, as early chapters in this volume convey, the ‘musical’ is an amalgamation of an almost dizzying array of forms, many European or even African-influenced, as in minstrelsy, its maturity and ‘Golden Age’ were largely the result of American artists, audiences and society, and through the work of such writers as Stephen Sondheim, Jeanine Tesori, David Yaz beck and Adam Guettel, the musical remains a vibrant part of American culture, both on and off Broadway.

However, the musical is becoming increasingly international, particularly through the popularity of the ‘megamusical’, as Prece and Everett argue in the previous chapter. As the Music Theatre International website states: ‘The musical theatre is no longer the province of New York, London and the English speaking world – it is a truly multi-cultural phenomenon.’ This globalisation is certainly not unique to musical theatre; all forms of culture at the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first centuries are affected by the increasing interconnection of world societies and systems, an interdependency that has expanded exponentially during the past few decades through mediatised forms of communication, such as television, digital recordings, mobile phones, and perhaps most of all, the Internet. Critics of globalisation point to the breakdown of cultural specificity and nationhood; supporters applaud the levelling of world economic playing fields caused by technology.