{"id":48140,"date":"2024-10-14T17:01:15","date_gmt":"2024-10-14T15:01:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/9751a476-283b-4df8-bdcb-35e79ba13aa3"},"modified":"2024-10-14T18:07:17","modified_gmt":"2024-10-14T16:07:17","slug":"from-madame-butterfly-to-mamma-mia-how-operas-gave-birth-to-stage-musicals","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/rss_feed\/from-madame-butterfly-to-mamma-mia-how-operas-gave-birth-to-stage-musicals\/","title":{"rendered":"From Madame Butterfly to Mamma Mia! How operas gave birth to stage musicals"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>

By <\/p>

Published: Monday, 14 October 2024 at 15:01 PM<\/p>

\n\n

Read on to discover the operatic origins of today’s stage musicals…<\/strong><\/p>

Is there really that much difference between opera and musicals?<\/h2>
Immediately after the end of World War II, US Army forces marched into Bayreuth, shrine of Wagner\u2019s operas and a beloved hang-out of Adolf Hitler. The famous Festspielhaus was repurposed and given over to various populist entertainments including musical revues \u2013 a calculated poke in the eye for Hitler\u2019s ideal of the master artform for the master race. Yet, ignoring for a moment the Nazis\u2019 twisted artistic logic, is there really such a vast gap between the world of opera<\/a><\/strong> and the world of what revues evolved into \u2013 namely, musical theatre? With English National Opera performing My Fair Lady<\/em> in 2022, to say nothing of John Wilson\u2019s recording of Oklahoma!<\/em> scooping BBC Music Magazine\u2019s<\/em> 2024 Opera Award<\/a><\/strong>, it\u2019s a question worth asking.\u00a0<\/p>
What’s the difference between a musical and an opera?<\/a><\/strong><\/li><\/ul>
In fact, if opera is \u2018high art\u2019 (not always) and musicals are \u2018low art\u2019 (not at all), the road that connects them is virtually flat, and well travelled. After all, what makes Mozart<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s The Magic Flute<\/a><\/strong><\/em>, a piece of 18th-century Viennese music-hall populism, combining speech, music and movement, not a musical of its day? It happens to be a\u00a0sublime masterpiece, but then so is\u00a0My<\/em> Fair Lady<\/em>. Bizet<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s Carmen<\/a><\/strong><\/em> was judged to be so close to a musical that it was rejigged by orchestrator Robert Russell Bennett and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to become one in 1943, Carmen Jones<\/em>. <\/p>
<\/div><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">John Wilson conducts Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!<\/em> at The Proms, 2010<\/figcaption><\/figure><h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Intertwined art forms<\/h3>Even the most intellectual of composers haven\u2019t kept their distance \u2013 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/igor-stravinsky\">Stravinksy<\/a><\/strong> wrote a ballet sequence for a 1944 Broadway revue, The Seven Lively Arts<\/em>. William Schuman, before becoming a byword for uber-serious academia, penned popular songs with future musicals king Frank Loesser. Zipping forward a few decades, in 2005 Thomas Meehan, the irrepressible script writer for Annie<\/em>, Hairspray<\/em> and The Producers<\/em>, turned librettist for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/news\/lorin-maazel-1930-2014\">Lorin Maazel<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s opera 1984<\/em>. Meanwhile, 2003\u2019s foul-mouthed, formally-constructed Jerry Springer: The Opera<\/em> was either a musical that utilised the ennobling power of operatic form, or the other way round (or something).<\/p><ul><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/works\/best-stage-musicals-of-all-time\">15 of the best stage musicals of all time<\/a><\/strong><\/li><\/ul><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Opera and musicals… they evolved from the same place<\/h2>Although the relationship between opera and musicals has always been close, few would argue that they are the same thing. Does Lerner and Loewe\u2019s Camelot<\/em> inhabit the same world as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/benjamin-britten-composer\">Benjamin Britten<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream<\/em> (both 1960)? How about 1967\u2019s counter-culture rock-musical Hair<\/em> and the previous year\u2019s big Metropolitan Opera premiere, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/samuel-barber\">Samuel Barber<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s Antony and Cleopatra<\/em>? Do 2017\u2019s SIX <\/em>and Girls Of The Golden West<\/em> by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/john-adams\">John Adams<\/a><\/strong> share any DNA at all? I mean, at all?<\/p>That last example is perhaps a mischievous one, as the pop-concert antics of SIX<\/em> feel about as removed from the opera world as you can get, whereas some recent hit musicals \u2013 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/artists\/lin-manuel-miranda-on-sondheim-gilbert-sullivan-and-wrestling-with-history-in-hamilton\">Lin-Manuel Miranda<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s Hamilton<\/em> with its sweeping history-charting heroics, or Ana\u00efs Mitchell\u2019s spin on the Orpheus myth Hadestown<\/em>\u00a0 \u2013 certainly have more of the whiff of the opera stage about them.<\/p><h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A story told through acting and music<\/h3>Yet it all evolved from the same places. Opera (or its lighter sibling <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/musical-terms\/what-operetta\">operetta<\/a><\/strong>, which simply places more emphasis on speech alongside the music and tends more towards comedy) gave birth to the musical, establishing what we recognise as the standard musical-theatrical experience: a long-form story, told dramatically through acting and music, and acting through the music; musicians to underscore; often a strong choreographed element; and other theatrical trappings such as sets, lighting and sound design (once, just acoustics). <\/p><ul><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/works\/10-of-the-best-songs-from-musicals\">The 10 best songs from musicals<\/a><\/strong><\/li><\/ul>But opera wasn\u2019t the only parent. Musicals also sprang from revues \u2013 variety evenings with self-contained musical numbers that were barely connected, if at all. In America, there was a strong vaudeville strain \u2013 the British equivalent was music hall. Then came Oscar Hammerstein II who, together with Jerome Kern and Show Boat <\/em>(1927), reforged a night on Broadway as a cohesive, rolling, operatic experience with story and structure to the fore \u2013 and he then did it again in 1943, this time in the company of Richard Rodgers, with 1943\u2019s\u00a0Oklahoma!<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The rise of the musical<\/h2>Musicals never looked back. Sometimes they nestle closer to opera, as with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/george-gershwin\">George Gershwin<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s \u2018folk opera\u2019 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/recordings\/porgy-and-bess-gershwins-opera\">Porgy And Bess<\/a><\/strong><\/em>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/leonard-bernstein\">Leonard Bernstein<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s operetta-like Candide<\/em>, \u2018rock operas\u2019 of the 1970\u2019s like Stephen Schwartz\u2019s Godspell<\/em> or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/who-is-andrew-lloyd-webber\">Andrew Lloyd Webber<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s Jesus Christ Superstar<\/em>, or the mega-hit through-sung musicals of the 1980s and early \u201990s (Lloyd Webber\u2019s Evita<\/em>, Cats<\/em> and Phantom of the Opera<\/em>, or Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Sch\u00f6nberg\u2019s Les Mis\u00e9rables<\/em> and Miss Saigon<\/em>). At other times, like a teenager ashamed to be seen with their parents, they\u2019ve pushed away.<\/p><ul><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/works\/the-best-musicals-by-leonard-bernstein\">The best musicals by Leonard Bernstein<\/a><\/strong><\/li><\/ul>Yet for musical theatre and operetta historian Kurt G\u00e4nzl, the connection is always there. \u2018The relationship between opera and the modern-day so-called musical is rather like one of second cousins twice removed,\u2019 he says, \u2018and the family tree includes a good few illegitimate relations and misfits. Anything put on a stage, having both words and music, belongs somewhere on that family tree. Even if\u00a0distantly.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>For G\u00e4nzl, even a \u2018pop catalogue\u2019 show such as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/news\/abba-pays-tribute-to-tchaikovskys-swan-lake-in-the-final-track-in-its-new-voyage-album\">Abba<\/a><\/strong>-fest Mamma Mia!<\/em> is included: \u2018There were 18th-century jukebox musicals.\u2019 He cites John Gay\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/works\/the-beggars-opera-guide\">The Beggar\u2019s Opera<\/a><\/strong><\/em> and Kane O\u2019Hara\u2019s Midas<\/em> \u2013 both operatic hits which used popular songs of their day \u2013 and throws in for good measure 1916\u2019s Das Dreim\u00e4derlhaus <\/em>(House Of The Three Girls<\/em>), a Viennese operetta which repurposes the music of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/franz-schubert\">Schubert<\/a><\/strong> to tell a romantic story and was an enormous international hit around the world, including in London and New York \u2013 very Mamma Mia!<\/em> indeed!<\/p><figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embedwrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Mamma Mia (Finale) - Mamma Mia! The Musical (Australian Cast)\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/c2n2V7ADlmQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\"\/><\/div><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The Australian cast of Mamma Mia! The Musical<\/em> perform ‘Mamma Mia’ from the finale at the Princess Theatre in Melbourne<\/figcaption><\/figure><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Which comes first? Music or the plot?<\/h2>For Jason Robert Brown, composer-lyricist both of shows that seem highly operatic, such as Parade<\/em>, and others less so, like Mr Saturday Night<\/em>, there is a crucial difference. \u2018A musical and an opera are both doing the same thing, telling a story with music,\u2019 says classically trained Brown. \u2018But the opera world started with the music itself, whereas the theatre came at it from a more dramatic place \u2013 what if we take this plot and put music and add songs to it, whereas opera feels like, \u201cWhat can I apply my music to?\u201d\u2019<\/p><ul><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/tv-and-film-music\/best-movie-musicals\">The 15 best movie musicals of all time<\/a><\/strong><\/li><\/ul>As for the \u2018classic era\u2019 composers \u2013 the Cole Porters, Irving Berlins and Lerner and Loewes, whose shows most closely resemble operettas \u2013 Brown\u2019s take is fascinating. \u2018In the mid-20th century there were a lot of composers who had training in Western classical music and who aspired to the respectability that was given to high art forms like opera, also ballet, and incorporated elements of those into musical theatre. And the producers were happy because it could help bring the opera crowds to\u00a0their\u00a0shows.\u2019<\/p><h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The same basic structure<\/h3>And yet, I argue, even the new-wave musicals of the 1960s and \u201970s, like the rocking Hair<\/em> or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/articles\/stephen-sondheim-master-of-reinvention\">Stephen Sondheim<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s poppy Company<\/em>, kept the same basic structure \u2013 an orchestral core, the same kinds of acoustic dynamics, voices that would blend well with the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/articles\/what-instruments-make-up-an-orchestra\">orchestra<\/a><\/strong>, and\u00a0so on.<\/p>\u2018The similarities are mostly accounted for by the venues themselves,\u2019 Brown responds. \u2018From 1945 through around 1987 you had an open pit, full of musicians. And so, in order to do your musical you had to utilise that pit with those musicians, also to satisfy the union requirements! So even the groundbreaking A Chorus Line<\/em>, which in a lot of ways is hard to connect back to operatic tradition, still had to hire those musicians. Plus, you had orchestrators versed in classical work.\u2019<\/p><ul><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/works\/worst-musicals\">‘Two hours of leaden dross’: the biggest stage musical flops of all time<\/a><\/strong><\/li><\/ul><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Musicals have become more flexible<\/h2>For Brown, Sondheim and Lloyd Webber each represented a turning-point. \u2018Sondheim was at the end of a line; Lloyd Webber was at the beginning of a line. Sondheim, who went to study with classical composer <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/news\/milton-babbitt-1916-2011\">Milton Babbitt<\/a><\/strong>, loved classical music and brought that into his writing so that when he would write rock stuff it was always, quote-unquote, rock treated through a classical lens. Lloyd Webber is the opposite, well versed in classical through his composer father, but wanted to be a rock \u2019n\u2019 roll guy. By the time you get to Phantom<\/em>, with its melding of a mature musical voice, I still hear that show as a classical piece written by a rock guy, whereas Sondheim\u2019s Company<\/em> is a rock-style piece written by a classically trained guy.\u2019<\/p><ul><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/works\/the-best-musicals-by-andrew-lloyd-webber\">The best musicals by Andrew Lloyd Webber<\/a><\/strong><\/li><\/ul>In other words, musicals became more flexible \u2013 and, once the orchestras\u2019 unions lost their fight to maintain a large minimum number of players, heavily amplified electronic music became the norm. \u2018Now people are used to hearing big, heavy beats. You\u2019ve also got to project the lyrics over that, which requires a different kind of vocal production.\u2019<\/p><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Can you sing in both operas and musicals?<\/h2>Not always, perhaps. Scarlett Strallen, whose leading-lady career has encompassed classic-era shows such as She Loves Me<\/em> and Candide <\/em>(and who stars in John Wilson\u2019s forthcoming My Fair Lady<\/em> recording) as well as more modern musicals like A Chorus Line<\/em>, approaches learning every role in the same \u2013 classically informed \u2013 way. \u2018I was a ballet dancer first,\u2019 she says, \u2018and it\u2019s the same classical method for singing as for dancing. You take tiny chunks at a time \u2013 just as a dancer studies for hours to get the right body shape. As one of my teachers would\u00a0say, \u201cMake the mould before the\u00a0gold.\u201d\u2019\u00a0<\/p><ul><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/best-musical-theatre-composers\">10 of the best musical theatre composers<\/a><\/strong><\/li><\/ul>Strallen has starred in Joseph Papp\u2019s famous Broadway revisioning of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/articles\/why-are-gilbert-and-sullivan-operas-so-popular\">Gilbert and Sullivan<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s The Pirates of Penzance<\/em>. \u2018I went through it phrase by phrase, making painstakingly slow progress \u2013 you can spend three days on a single phrase. Every song is the same at heart \u2013 you need to understand how it builds, where\u2019s the peak and why, and why does the character need to express herself in that way.\u2019 And, she adds, there\u2019s also the aspect of vocal health \u2013 a Broadway performer needs technique and control, as opera singers do, in order not to destroy the voice over so many shows a week.<\/p><h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Directors and conductors<\/h3>The process is decidedly not the same for directors, as attested by Bartlett Sher, who flits between the two worlds \u2013 currently his staging of Cole Porter\u2019s Kiss Me, Kate<\/em> is playing in the West End. \u2018You don\u2019t have any time in opera,\u2019 he says. \u2018My first time at the Met, I had two-and-a-half weeks of rehearsal, seven days on stage, one dress rehearsal and then we opened. For a musical, you typically get four to five weeks of rehearsals, ten full days of tech and four weeks of preview performances before the opening. But opera is very expensive to mount, so you must work incredibly fast!\u2019 And the leadership dynamics in opera are different, he admits, with the conductor usually taking the lead \u2013 whereas in musicals the director is usually in charge. That leads to different creative emphases.<\/p><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Has opera become too academic?<\/h2><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/interview-jake-heggie\">Jake Heggie<\/a><\/strong>, one of today\u2019s most successful opera composers, grew up an avid musical theatre fan, and his eye-to-the-commercial choice of operatic subjects would seem a natural for any Broadway writer \u2013 Moby-Dick<\/em>, Dead Man Walking<\/em>, The End of the Affair<\/em>. He credits musical theatre with giving him his first sense of great storytelling, especially Sondheim\u2019s Sweeney Todd<\/em>. \u2018Sondheim once said to me, \u201cIf you\u2019ve got a great story, 50 per cent of your work is done.\u201d But I found that same sense of storytelling and character development when I first saw La traviata<\/em>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/works\/puccinis-tosca-guide\">Tosca<\/a><\/strong><\/em> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/recordings\/peter-grimes-britten\">Peter Grimes<\/a><\/strong><\/em>. And I felt the same desire to tell a story, but to explore it even more deeply through music.\u2019<\/p><ul><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/works\/stephen-sondheim-the-composers-best-musicals\">Stephen Sondheim: the composer’s best musicals<\/a><\/strong><\/li><\/ul>He feels that at some points in recent decades, operas became too academic, and during that period, Phantom<\/em>, Les Mis<\/em> and the others weren\u2019t just influenced by operas, they actually were operas \u2013 populist opera effectively morphed, and decamped as best it could to Broadway.<\/p><figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embedwrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Sweeney Todd - The Worst Pies in London\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/gqapHRAqnfk?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\"\/><\/div><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Angela Lansbury performs ‘The Worst Pies In London’ in Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Creating space for the music<\/h3>Heggie\u2019s description of the opera development process points up a clear difference. \u2018A reading where people go through the libretto on\u00a0its own is not useful to me. If it works without music, it\u2019s not a good libretto. There need to be holes, places where the music will do the storytelling. Most of the great operas really work because you\u2019re getting information from the score that is unspoken, that goes beyond words. Moments, for instance, when a voice takes its time to spin a phrase, and you are getting new emotional information, because of the way it is set and sung. In opera, you don\u2019t need to speak the language it\u2019s written in; you understand emotionally and that\u2019s the key.\u2019<\/p><ul><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/works\/best-christmas-musicals\">Christmas musicals: 10 of the best<\/a><\/strong><\/li><\/ul>We talk about those kinds of emotional spaces in operas \u2013 the hushed, eloquent reprise of the tenor <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/musical-terms\/what-aria\">aria<\/a><\/strong> \u2018Dalla sua pace\u2019 in Mozart\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/recordings\/mozarts-don-giovanni-best-recordings\">Don Giovanni<\/a><\/strong><\/em>, the ominous Act III cello solo in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/giuseppe-verdi\">Verdi<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/news\/new-yorks-met-opera-discards-blackface-otello\">Otello<\/a><\/strong><\/em>. And, though I\u2019ve seen musicals in languages I don\u2019t speak, and they worked \u2013 Maury Yeston\u2019s Titanic<\/em> in Dutch! \u2013 I know what he means. But\u2026 that emotional musical power is also available\u00a0to musicals.\u00a0<\/p><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Opera… rooted in the epic and mythic<\/h2>Rachel Chavkin, director of Hadestown<\/em>, agrees that atmosphere and a broad structural, almost symphonic, sense of pacing was part of \u2018making something rooted in the epic and the mythic. So, if that is what is meant by operatic, totally. It was very conscious, very deliberate.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>And so, for instance, the scenes above ground are light, swift, almost pastoral, but once we get to hell, the scoring is heavier, the movement slower. That kind of power seems operatic in a primordial sense. Maybe what we mean by \u2018operatic\u2019 is just that: some long-ago instinct to combine storytelling with song. Chavkin agrees: \u2018Singing is ancient, so in that way it is primeval, because as long as there have been humans, someone has been\u00a0humming.\u2019<\/p><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The future of musicals<\/h2>So back to that first question \u2013 are musicals and operas that far apart? Aren\u2019t the refined histrionics of La traviata<\/em> a million miles away from the cool-car-and-pop stylings of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/tv-and-film-music\/back-to-the-future-musical-guide\">Back to\u00a0the\u00a0Future<\/a><\/strong><\/em>? \u2018The musical has grown to a new place that can hold any other medium within it,\u2019 says Bartlett Sher. \u2018The source can be opera or operetta, hip hop or Huey Lewis. The good news is that theatres are still finding ways of getting people into big rooms for live entertainments with other human beings.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>So, opera is musical theatre\u2019s root, but is it its future? As I look at the musicals, new and revived, dominating today\u2019s stages \u2013 with their soaring ensembles, flying cars, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/works\/classical-music-inspired-shakespeare\">Shakespearean<\/a><\/strong> riffs, torch songs, broken hearts and tickled ribs \u2013 I am reminded of a quote that fits it all perfectly. \u2018The essence\u2026 is the blending of all art forms \u2013 music, drama, poetry and visual design \u2013 into a unified and powerful experience.\u2019 The author of the quote was\u00a0Giuseppe Verdi, and\u00a0he\u00a0was talking about\u00a0opera.<\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n<hr class=\"no-tts wp-block-separator\"\/>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Published: Monday, 14 October 2024 at 15:01 PM Read on to discover the operatic origins of today’s stage musicals… Is there really that much difference between opera and musicals? Immediately after the end of World War II, US Army forces marched into Bayreuth, shrine of Wagner\u2019s operas and a beloved hang-out of Adolf Hitler. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":48141,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"12"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/10\/from-madame-butterfly-to-mamma-mia-how-operas-gave-birth-to-stage-musicals.jpg",1200,800,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/10\/from-madame-butterfly-to-mamma-mia-how-operas-gave-birth-to-stage-musicals-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/10\/from-madame-butterfly-to-mamma-mia-how-operas-gave-birth-to-stage-musicals-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/10\/from-madame-butterfly-to-mamma-mia-how-operas-gave-birth-to-stage-musicals-768x512.jpg",768,512,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/10\/from-madame-butterfly-to-mamma-mia-how-operas-gave-birth-to-stage-musicals-1024x683.jpg",800,534,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/10\/from-madame-butterfly-to-mamma-mia-how-operas-gave-birth-to-stage-musicals.jpg",1200,800,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/10\/from-madame-butterfly-to-mamma-mia-how-operas-gave-birth-to-stage-musicals.jpg",1200,800,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"By Published: Monday, 14 October 2024 at 15:01 PM Read on to discover the operatic origins of today’s stage musicals… Is there really that much difference between opera and musicals? Immediately after the end of World War II, US Army forces marched into Bayreuth, shrine of Wagner\u2019s operas and a beloved hang-out of Adolf Hitler.…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/48140"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}