The Development of the Rock Musical in the Late 20th Century
Rock Opera
Term Paper
The Development of The Rock Musical In the Late 20th Century
Rock opera in its narrow definition seems to be a purely British phenomenon, possibly because at the time of its arrival England, as opposed to the United States, had not found its musical theater voice yet: while musical theater was booming in the United States from the early twentieth century onwards, England didn't develop a popular musical tradition until the late 1960s, when Andrew Lloyd Webber started to write and produce large-scale musicals for the London theaters.
To provide an overview of the scope of the genre of rock opera, I will briefly discuss some of the most renowned works. It is usually the British rock band The Who that is credited with releasing the first rock opera ever (in 1969), Tommy. It was partly inspired by the Beatles' 1967 concept album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which had already experimented with alternatives to the simple, single-oriented approach to recording LPs. Interestingly, as far as productivity is concerned, this genre reached its peak in the late 1960s and early 1970s in England at a time when rock and pop musicians were keen on experimenting with new musical forms and contents, and when society in Europe was, after the highly active 1960s in the United States, still very much interested in musical treatments of contemporary problems and hardships.
The Who's rock opera follow-up to Tommy, Quadrophenia, was released in 1973; from 1969 to 1975, another British rock band, the Kinks, released four rock operas: Arthur or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire (1969), Preservation (1973), Soap Opera (1975), and Schoolboys in Disgrace (1975). Jethro Tull's front man Ian Anderson also experimented with the rock opera format in the 1970s, contributing Thick as a Brick(1972), A Passion Play(1973), and Too Old to Rock'n'Roll: Too Young to Die(1976). Probably the last rock opera to come out of England
Term Paper
The Development of The Rock Musical In the Late 20th Century
Rock opera in its narrow definition seems to be a purely British phenomenon, possibly because at the time of its arrival England, as opposed to the United States, had not found its musical theater voice yet: while musical theater was booming in the United States from the early twentieth century onwards, England didn't develop a popular musical tradition until the late 1960s, when Andrew Lloyd Webber started to write and produce large-scale musicals for the London theaters.
To provide an overview of the scope of the genre of rock opera, I will briefly discuss some of the most renowned works. It is usually the British rock band The Who that is credited with releasing the first rock opera ever (in 1969), Tommy. It was partly inspired by the Beatles' 1967 concept album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which had already experimented with alternatives to the simple, single-oriented approach to recording LPs. Interestingly, as far as productivity is concerned, this genre reached its peak in the late 1960s and early 1970s in England at a time when rock and pop musicians were keen on experimenting with new musical forms and contents, and when society in Europe was, after the highly active 1960s in the United States, still very much interested in musical treatments of contemporary problems and hardships.
The Who's rock opera follow-up to Tommy, Quadrophenia, was released in 1973; from 1969 to 1975, another British rock band, the Kinks, released four rock operas: Arthur or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire (1969), Preservation (1973), Soap Opera (1975), and Schoolboys in Disgrace (1975). Jethro Tull's front man Ian Anderson also experimented with the rock opera format in the 1970s, contributing Thick as a Brick(1972), A Passion Play(1973), and Too Old to Rock'n'Roll: Too Young to Die(1976). Probably the last rock opera to come out of England