attachments_06-04-2012_23-41-26 / 1 musical

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Read the following text and be ready to answer the questions given below.

Musical

“It was not surprising that the growth of the cinema and later of television made all kinds of theatres, music-halls and variety-theatres unpopular. The houses were half-empty and the audience was not so enthusiastic about new plays and shows. Commercial managements had to concentrate on their plans and projects and made their big effort to win back the audience by staging the type of shows, which could compete with TV and cinema production. Staged musicals became such types of shows.” (“Morning Star”)

The musical components of a traditional musical are generally referred to as the score, with sung lines named the “lyrics” and the spoken lines the "book".

A musical can run from a few minutes to several hours long. A musical will usually have around twenty to thirty songs of varying length (including reprises and underscoring).

There is no easy answer to the most frequently-asked question about musical theatre: "Which comes first, the music or the lyrics?" Sometimes a melody inspires a lyric, sometimes a lyric inspires a melody.

Musicals in Russia have become popular since 1980s when the Lenkom Theatre staged “Juno and Avos”, rock opera with music by Alexey Rybnikov and verses by Andrey Voznesensky. It is still popular with the audiences and when it is on, the house is always full. Among other Western versions we can name “Romeo&Juliet”, “Hair”, “Lips”, “Jesus Christ Superstar” with a free Russian translation, “Notre-Dame de Paris” and “Cats”.

Next year “Cats” will celebrate its 25^th birthday. During these years the musical has been shown more than 15 thousand times in different countries. A famous musical transfers human relations to the world of cats, inhabitants of the garbage. The music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and poetry by Thomas Eliot are majestic.

Musicals in Russia become more and more popular and nowadays a lot of ordinary plays are being added with songs and dances and become a kind of modern cocktail of drama and music.

1. What’s caused the appearance of musicals?

2. What are the traditional components of a musical?

3. What world famous musicals can you name (also staged in Russia)?