Musical
Entertaining stage work with singing, dancing and spoken dialogue (Broadway, West End).
What it means
A musical is an entertaining stage work that combines singing, dancing and spoken dialogue into a plot. It is usually accompanied by a small orchestra or a band, and the singers are often amplified with microphones. The songs drive the action forward or show the feelings of the characters.
Musical use
The musical arose in the 19th and early 20th centuries from operetta, revue, vaudeville and music hall, above all in New York (Broadway) and London (West End). Show Boat (1927) by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein is regarded as an early milestone, Oklahoma! (1943) by Richard Rodgers and Hammerstein as a model of the integration of song, dance and plot. Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story (1957) and the works of Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber carried the genre further.
The musical should be distinguished from opera, in which everything is usually sung and classical voices are the norm, and from operetta, which in the European context has a light tone and waltzes.
Performance practice
When you sing in a musical, combine text and acting: diction must be intelligible, and the tone can often be closer to speech than in opera. Make sure you can carry dance and singing at the same time.