Musical Theatre

1. Definition/Features of Musical Theatre

          Musical theatre is a kind of dramatic performance that contains songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance.

2. Comparison with Opera

Musicals usually focus on dialogue, dancing, using different styles of popular music, and preventing certain operatic conventions.  On the other hand, even though the singer in an opera is mainly a singer, only secondarily an actor and seldom needs to dance, a musical performer is often an actor first and then a singer and dancer.  In addition, actors in musicals often use microphones of their singing voices in a way that would usually be disapproved of in an operatic context.

3. Two Large Venues Musicals are Performed In

          People usually enjoy musicals in London or New York, and performers always sing musicals in English or French.

4. Other Forms of Theatre (with Music)

          There are many Eastern traditions of theatre that include music, like Chinese Opera, Taiwanese opera, Noh (a kind of Japanese drama) and Musical theatre in India.

5. Make a list (Musicals/Opera)

 1. Musicals: Billy Elliot, Cats, The King And I, Les Miserables, Romeo and Juliet, The Sound of Music, Notre Dame de Paris, The Phantom of the Opera…

 2. Operas: Turandot, The Marriage of Figaro, Carmen, the Magic Flute, Faust, Aida, Tosca, Rigoletto, La traviata, Hairspray…

6. Find a Song (Video) of Musical and Briefly Introduce the Background (with Lyrics)