When is a musical not a musical?

Where is the line between a musical and an opera? And where does an operetta come into it? I have just seen that English National Opera are doing Candide, this to me is more of a musical but Bernstein’s music is tremendously operatic. Also ENO seem to have a wonderful cast of British opera singers. I know the old story about Bernstein’s desire to have singers who could act rather than actors who can sing but this is another level. Candide is also directed by the great opera director Robert Carsen. I will be paying another visit to the ENO as it looks like a lot of fun.

Some years ago I went to Drury Lane in a party with members of a local drama group. The musical was Miss Saigon, and let’s just say that it wasn’t a very rewarding evening. When I pointed out that Madama Butterfly had the same plot with better music and dramatic construction, I was told “ That’s opera though, much too posh for us”. Stupid bastards!

I think that there is a very real problem when composers of musicals feel that they have to seek to be significant. The more solemn they sound, the more boring they get. Rodgers and Hart, Irving Berlin and Gershwin all knew this, Rodgers and Hammerstein steered a bit close to the wind. There’s nothing on the stage more mawkish than the opening scene of Carousel.

West Side Story certainly uses operatic techniques as an integral part of its structure. The way in which Bernstein uses the interval of the tritone throughout to both unite the piece (the interval in fact appears in nearly all the major tunes) and to give it a sense of yearning and incompleteness. Also, the dance sequences (in contrast to most musicals) are emotionally expressive and part of the drama rather than being merely tacked on for display. In fact, the whole piece is through composed in a way more common to opera than to a musical.

However, when you get to the final scene and Maria’s speech over Tony’s corpse, “Are there any bullets left?” Bernstein made several attempts to set it as an aria but just couldn’t find a way of setting it operatically. In the end it is rendered as spoken dialogue. This I would suggest makes West Side Story more of a musical than an opera.

Of course you can make some of these points about many operas (ballets which are tacked on for display, the use of spoken dialogue, etc.). As always it pays not to be too dogmatic about these things.

Think of the spoken dialogue at the end of Peter Grimes (“Sail out until you lose sight of land”). We’ve been through the emotional wringer in the previous couple of hours and are reduced to mere speech.

As for the difference between opera and musicals, the more I think about it, the less sure I become – I can find operas which have characteristics of what I would expect to find in a musical, and vice versa. Or do I just say that musicals are designed to be amplified, operas aren’t?

Tags: britten, candide, coliseum, english national opera, leonard bernstein, london, musical, peter grimes, west side story