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217-494: Stephen Joshua Sondheim ( / ˈ s ɒ n d h aɪ m / ; March   22, 1930 – November   26, 2021) was an American composer and lyricist. Regarded as one of the most important figures in 20th-century musical theater , he is credited with reinventing the American musical. With his frequent collaborators Harold Prince and James Lapine , Sondheim's Broadway musicals tackled unexpected themes that ranged beyond

434-485: A leading tone is, you think, Oh my God. What a diatonic scale is—Oh my God! The logic of it. And, of course, what that meant to me was: Well, I can do that. Because you just don't know. You think it's a talent, you think you're born with this thing. What I've found out and what I believed is that everybody is talented. It's just that some people get it developed and some don't. The composer told Meryle Secrest: "I just wanted to study composition, theory, and harmony without

651-418: A liberal arts curriculum, Williams College provides undergraduate instruction in 25 academic departments and interdisciplinary programs including 36 majors in the humanities , arts , social sciences , and natural sciences . Williams offers an almost entirely undergraduate instruction, though there are two graduate programs in development economics and art history . The college maintains affiliations with

868-528: A 4–1–4 schedule of two four-course semesters plus a one-course "winter study" term in January. During the winter study term, students study one of various courses outside of typical curriculum for 3 weeks. Students typically take this course on a pass/fail basis. Past course offerings have included: Ski Patrol, Learn to Play Chess, Accounting, Inside Jury Deliberations, and Creating a Life: Shaping Your Life After Williams, among many others. Williams students often take

1085-557: A Little Christmas", "I Am What I Am", "Mame", "The Best of Times", "Before the Parade Passes By", "Put On Your Sunday Clothes", "It Only Takes a Moment", "Bosom Buddies" and "I Won't Send Roses", recorded by such artists as Louis Armstrong , Eydie Gormé , Barbra Streisand , Petula Clark and Bernadette Peters. Herman's songbook has been the subject of two popular musical revues, Jerry's Girls (Broadway, 1985) and Showtune (off-Broadway, 2003). The musical started to diverge from

1302-432: A Person Crazy", "Another Hundred People", " Getting Married Today ", "Side by Side", " The Ladies Who Lunch ", and " Being Alive ". Walter Kerr of The New York Times praised the production, the performances, and the score, writing, "Sondheim has never written a more sophisticated, more pertinent, or—this is the surprising thing in the circumstances—more melodious score". Documentary filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker captured

1519-432: A baby!" Burt Shevelove invited Sondheim to a party where Sondheim arrived before him but knew no one else well. He saw a familiar face, Arthur Laurents , who had seen one of the auditions of Saturday Night , and they began talking. Laurents told him he was working on a musical version of Romeo and Juliet with Leonard Bernstein , but they needed a lyricist; Betty Comden and Adolph Green , who were supposed to write

1736-637: A book by John Weidman . The show explored, in revue form, a group of historical figures who tried (with varying success) to assassinate the President of the United States. The musical closed on February 16, 1991, after 73 performances. The Los Angeles Times reported the show "has been sold out since previews began, reflecting the strong appeal of Sondheim's work among the theater crowd." In his review for The New York Times , Frank Rich wrote, " Assassins will have to fire with sharper aim and fewer blanks if it

1953-579: A book musical are its music , lyrics and book . The book or script of a musical refers to the story, character development and dramatic structure, including the spoken dialogue and stage directions, but it can also refer to the dialogue and lyrics together, which are sometimes referred to as the libretto (Italian for "small book"). The music and lyrics together form the score of a musical and include songs, incidental music and musical scenes, which are "theatrical sequence[s] set to music, often combining song with spoken dialogue." The interpretation of

2170-430: A chance to work with very gifted professionals on a show that sounds interesting, and you could always write your own music eventually. My advice would be to take the job." West Side Story , directed by Jerome Robbins , opened in 1957 and ran for 732 performances. Sondheim expressed dissatisfaction with his lyrics, saying they did not always fit the characters and were sometimes too consciously poetic. Initially Bernstein

2387-510: A completely new genre – the musical play as distinguished from musical comedy. Now ... everything else was subservient to that play. Now ... came complete integration of song, humor and production numbers into a single and inextricable artistic entity." As the Great Depression set in during the post-Broadway national tour of Show Boat , the public turned back to mostly light, escapist song-and-dance entertainment. Audiences on both sides of

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2604-665: A decade by the Keck Foundation and now with its student research programs sponsored by the National Science Foundation . Hopkins Hall serves as the administration building on campus, housing the offices of the president, Dean of the Faculty , registrar , and provost , among others. There is a Newman Center on campus. The Chapin Library supports the liberal arts curriculum of the college by allowing students close access to

2821-431: A doorman said he had gotten into a limousine to go to John F. Kennedy International Airport . Bernstein burst into tears and said, "It's over". Sondheim later said of this experience: "I was ashamed of the whole project. It was arch and didactic in the worst way." He wrote one and a half songs and threw them away, the only time he ever did that. Eighteen years later, Sondheim refused Bernstein's and Robbins's request to retry

3038-511: A few exceptions, compared with London runs, until the 1920s. Gilbert and Sullivan were widely pirated and also were imitated in New York by productions such as Reginald De Koven 's Robin Hood (1891) and John Philip Sousa 's El Capitan (1896). A Trip to Coontown (1898) was the first musical comedy entirely produced and performed by African Americans on Broadway (largely inspired by the routines of

3255-402: A few players . Rock musicals usually employ a small group of mostly rock instruments, and some musicals may call for only a piano or two instruments. The music in musicals uses a range of "styles and influences including operetta , classical techniques, folk music , jazz [and] local or historical styles [that] are appropriate to the setting." Musicals may begin with an overture played by

3472-641: A five-minute song than are spoken in a five-minute block of dialogue. Therefore, there is less time to develop drama in a musical than in a straight play of equivalent length, since a musical usually devotes more time to music than to dialogue. Within the compressed nature of a musical, the writers must develop the characters and the plot. The material presented in a musical may be original, or it may be adapted from novels ( Wicked and Man of La Mancha ), plays ( Hello, Dolly! and Carousel ), classic legends ( Camelot ), historical events ( Evita and Hamilton ) or films ( The Producers and Billy Elliot ). On

3689-461: A love relationship sanctioned and restricted by Protestant ideals of marriage; that a married couple should make a moral home with children away from the city in a suburb or small town; that the woman's function was as homemaker and mother; and that Americans incorporate an independent and pioneering spirit or that their success is self-made. The 1950s were crucial to the development of the American musical. Damon Runyon 's eclectic characters were at

3906-452: A memory. Good God!—[an] adult musical!" The production earned 12 Tony Award nominations and won 6 awards, including Best Musical and Best Original Score . " Send in the Clowns ", a song from the musical, was a hit for Judy Collins and became Sondheim's best-known song. It has since been covered by Frank Sinatra , Barbra Streisand , and Judi Dench . The production was adapted to screen in

4123-486: A mock- Kabuki style. The show closed after a run of 193 performances, and was revived on Broadway in 2004. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1979), with a score by Sondheim and a book by Hugh Wheeler , is based on Christopher Bond 's 1973 stage play derived from the Victorian original. The original production starred Angela Lansbury , Len Cariou , Victor Garber , and Edmund Lyndeck . Popular songs from

4340-502: A musical adaptation of Oscar Wilde 's 1895 hit The Importance of Being Earnest . West Side Story (1957) transported Romeo and Juliet to modern day New York City and converted the feuding Montague and Capulet families into opposing ethnic gangs, the Jets and the Sharks. The book was adapted by Arthur Laurents , with music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by newcomer Stephen Sondheim . It

4557-720: A musical comedy based on the lives of colorful businessmen Addison and Wilson Mizner . A Broadway production starring Nathan Lane and Victor Garber , directed by Sam Mendes , and planned for spring 2000, was delayed. Renamed Bounce in 2003, the show premiered at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., in a production directed by Harold Prince, his first collaboration with Sondheim since 1981. Poor reviews prevented Bounce from reaching Broadway, but

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4774-416: A musical generally became more expensive. Shuffle Along (1921), an all-African American show, was a hit on Broadway. A new generation of composers of operettas also emerged in the 1920s, such as Rudolf Friml and Sigmund Romberg , to create a series of popular Broadway hits. In London, writer-stars such as Ivor Novello and Noël Coward became popular, but the primacy of British musical theatre from

4991-497: A musical is the responsibility of its creative team, which includes a director, a musical director, usually a choreographer and sometimes an orchestrator . A musical's production is also creatively characterized by technical aspects, such as set design , costumes , stage properties (props) , lighting and sound . The creative team, designs and interpretations generally change from the original production to succeeding productions. Some production elements, however, may be retained from

5208-462: A musical style more aptly suited to twentieth-century society and its vernacular idiom. It was from America that the more direct style emerged, and in America that it was able to flourish in a developing society less hidebound by nineteenth-century tradition." In France, comédie musicale was written between in the early decades of the century for such stars as Yvonne Printemps . Progressing far beyond

5425-510: A musical version of The Exception and the Rule ; according to Robbins, Bernstein would not work without Sondheim. When Sondheim agreed, Guare asked: "Why haven't you all worked together since West Side Story ?" Sondheim answered, "You'll see". Guare said that working with Sondheim was like being with an old college roommate, and he depended on him to "decode and decipher their crazy way of working"; Bernstein worked only after midnight, and Robbins only in

5642-428: A musical. He then decided to work only when he could write both music and lyrics. Sondheim asked author and playwright James Goldman to join him as bookwriter for a new musical inspired by a gathering of former Ziegfeld Follies showgirls: initially titled The Girls Upstairs , it became Follies . In 1966, Sondheim semi-anonymously provided lyrics for " The Boy From... ", a parody of " The Girl from Ipanema " in

5859-535: A new Broadway record. In Britain, Me and My Girl ran for 1,646 performances. Still, a few creative teams began to build on Show Boat ' s innovations. Of Thee I Sing (1931), a political satire by the Gershwins, was the first musical awarded the Pulitzer Prize . As Thousands Cheer (1933), a revue by Irving Berlin and Moss Hart in which each song or sketch was based on a newspaper headline, marked

6076-458: A nine-performance bomb (although it introduced Angela Lansbury to musical theater). Do I Hear a Waltz? , based on Laurents's 1952 play The Time of the Cuckoo , was intended as another Rodgers and Hammerstein musical with Mary Martin in the lead. A new lyricist was needed, and Laurents and Rodgers's daughter, Mary , asked Sondheim to fill in. Although Richard Rodgers and Sondheim agreed that

6293-460: A number of blockbusters, like Fiddler on the Roof (1964; 3,242 performances), Hello, Dolly! (1964; 2,844 performances), Funny Girl (1964; 1,348 performances) and Man of La Mancha (1965; 2,328 performances), and some more risqué pieces like Cabaret , before ending with the emergence of the rock musical . In Britain, Oliver! (1960) ran for 2,618 performances, but the long-run champion of

6510-428: A number of drafts, and was interrupted briefly by Sondheim's next project. In 1959, Laurents and Robbins approached Sondheim for a musical version of Gypsy Rose Lee 's memoir after Irving Berlin and Cole Porter turned it down. Sondheim agreed, but Ethel Merman – cast as Mama Rose – had just finished Happy Hunting with an unknown composer (Harold Karr) and lyricist (Matt Dubey). Although Sondheim wanted to write

6727-407: A number of rare books and documents of interest. The library opened on June 18, 1923, with an initial collection of 9,000 volumes contributed by alumnus Alfred Clark Chapin , Class of 1869. Over the years, Chapin Library has grown to include over 50,000 volumes (including 3,000 more given by Chapin) as well as 100,000 other artifacts such as prints , photographs, maps , and bookplates . The library

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6944-441: A piano", Sondheim recalled. "A butler took a duster and brushed it up, tinkling the keys. I thought that was thrilling." Sondheim detested his mother, who was said to be psychologically abusive and to have projected her anger from her failed marriage onto her son: "When my father left her, she substituted me for him. And she used me the way she used him, to come on to and to berate, beat up on, you see. What she did for five years

7161-562: A private Quaker preparatory school in Bucks County, Pennsylvania , where he wrote his first musical, By George , in 1946. From 1946 to 1950, Sondheim attended Williams College . He graduated magna cum laude and received the Hubbard Hutchinson Prize, a two-year fellowship to study music. Sondheim traced his interest in theater to Very Warm for May , a Broadway musical he saw when he was nine. "The curtain went up and revealed

7378-416: A reputation as a raconteur and rhetorician, delivered a three-hour speech before the college's board of trustees, quoting abundantly from scripture, but was unable to secure her son's admission. Later scholarship questions whether these events occurred as Festus Prince may have been refused entry for an insufficient mastery of Latin, Greek, and French, all of which were necessary for successful completion of

7595-581: A revised version opened off-Broadway as Road Show at the Public Theater on October 28, 2008. Directed by John Doyle , it closed December 28, 2008. The production won the 2009 Obie Award for Music and Lyrics and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lyrics. Asked about writing new work, Sondheim replied in 2006: "No ... It's age. It's a diminution of energy and the worry that there are no new ideas. It's also an increasing lack of confidence. I'm not

7812-517: A river ... with lots of obstacles and mishaps along the way". As transportation improved, poverty in London and New York diminished, and street lighting made for safer travel at night, the number of patrons for the growing number of theatres increased enormously. Plays ran longer, leading to better profits and improved production values, and men began to bring their families to the theatre. The first musical theatre piece to exceed 500 consecutive performances

8029-547: A run of 931 performances. Gilbert and Sullivan's influence on later musical theatre was profound, creating examples of how to "integrate" musicals so that the lyrics and dialogue advanced a coherent story. Their works were admired and copied by early authors and composers of musicals in Britain and America. A Trip to Chinatown (1891) was Broadway's long-run champion (until Irene in 1919), running for 657 performances, but New York runs continued to be relatively short, with

8246-540: A series of 2.5D musicals based on popular anime and manga comics has developed in recent decades. Shorter or simplified "junior" versions of many musicals are available for schools and youth groups, and very short works created or adapted for performance by children are sometimes called minimusicals . The antecedents of musical theatre in Europe can be traced back to the theatre of ancient Greece , where music and dance were included in stage comedies and tragedies during

8463-540: A series of successful Broadway shows, including On Your Toes (1936, with Ray Bolger , the first Broadway musical to make dramatic use of classical dance), Babes in Arms (1937) and The Boys from Syracuse (1938). Porter added Du Barry Was a Lady (1939). The longest-running piece of musical theatre of the 1930s in the US was Hellzapoppin (1938), a revue with audience participation, which played for 1,404 performances, setting

8680-653: A show" and found a new collaborator in James Lapine after he saw Lapine's Twelve Dreams off-Broadway in 1981: "I was discouraged, and I don't know what would have happened if I hadn't discovered Twelve Dreams at the Public Theatre "; Lapine has a taste "for the avant-garde and for visually oriented theater in particular". Their first collaboration was Sunday in the Park with George (1984), with Sondheim's music evoking Georges Seurat 's pointillism . Sondheim and Lapine won

8897-757: A story-telling device in On Your Toes in 1936, which was followed by Agnes de Mille 's ballet and choreography in Oklahoma! . After Abbott collaborated with Jerome Robbins in On the Town and other shows, Robbins combined the roles of director and choreographer, emphasizing the story-telling power of dance in West Side Story , A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962) and Fiddler on

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9114-525: A tuition-based college. The legislature agreed and on June 22, 1793, Williams College was chartered. It was the second college to be founded in Massachusetts. At its founding, the college maintained a policy of racial segregation, refusing admission to black applicants. This policy was challenged by Lucy Terry Prince , who is credited as the first black American poet, when her son Festus was refused admission on account of his race. Prince, who had established

9331-559: A variety of composers (especially Jerome Kern ). Sondheim told Secrest that Kern had the ability "to develop a single motif through tiny variations into a long and never boring line and his maximum development of the minimum of material". He said of Babbitt, "I am his maverick, his one student who went into the popular arts with all his serious artillery". At Williams, Sondheim wrote a musical adaption of Beggar on Horseback (a 1924 play by George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly , with Kaufman's permission) that had three performances. A member of

9548-544: A wedding, and Ayers commissioned Sondheim for three songs for the show; Julius Epstein flew in from California and hired Sondheim, who worked with him in California for four or five months. After eight auditions for backers, half the money needed was raised. The show, retitled Saturday Night , was intended to open during the 1954–55 Broadway season, but Ayers died of leukemia in his early forties. The production rights transferred to his widow, Shirley, and due to her inexperience

9765-523: A week in New York City for four hours. (At the time, Babbitt was teaching at Princeton University .) According to Sondheim, they spent the first hour dissecting Rodgers and Hart or George Gershwin or studying Babbitt's favorites ( Buddy DeSylva , Lew Brown , and Ray Henderson ). They then proceeded to other forms of music (such as Mozart 's Jupiter Symphony ), critiquing them the same way. Fascinated by mathematics, Babbitt and Sondheim studied songs by

9982-459: Is a highly selective school with an acceptance rate of 8% for the Class of 2025. It has ranked first in U.S. News & World Report' s rankings of National Liberal Arts Colleges every year since 2004. In April 2022, Williams transitioned to an all grants system for financial aid, one of the few institutions of higher learning in the United States to do so. Though Williams College officially began

10199-664: Is a hugely amusing recitation of the attributes given by the different professions—priest, lawyer, and so on—to the pies they contribute to. At other times the lyrics have a black, piercing poetry to them." Lansbury's performance was captured alongside George Hearn in the Los Angeles production, which was filmed and shown on PBS as part of Masterpiece Theatre . It later earned five Primetime Emmy Award nominations. It has been revived on Broadway in 1989, 2005, and 2023. The 2023 production starred Josh Groban , Annaleigh Ashford , Jordan Fisher , and Gaten Matarazzo . A film adaptation

10416-535: Is a small, four-year liberal arts college accredited by the New England Commission of Higher Education . There are three academic curricular divisions ( humanities , sciences , and social sciences ), 25 departments, 36 majors , and two small master's degree programs in art history and development economics . Students may also concentrate in 12 additional academic areas that are not offered as majors (e.g., cognitive science ). The academic year follows

10633-724: Is currently located on the fourth floor of the recently reopened Sawyer Library. The Chapin Library's Americana collection includes original printings of all four founding documents of the United States: the Declaration of Independence , the Articles of Confederation , the Constitution , and the Bill of Rights . Additionally it houses George Washington's copy of The Federalist and the British reply to

10850-451: Is frequently longer than the second. The first act generally introduces nearly all of the characters and most of the music and often ends with the introduction of a dramatic conflict or plot complication while the second act may introduce a few new songs but usually contains reprises of important musical themes and resolves the conflict or complication. A book musical is usually built around four to six main theme tunes that are reprised later in

11067-621: Is located in Williamstown, in the Berkshires in rural northwestern Massachusetts, and contains more than 100 academic, athletic, and residential buildings. There are 360 voting faculty members, with a student-to-faculty ratio of 6:1. As of 2022 , the school has an enrollment of 2,021 undergraduate students and 50 graduate students. Following a liberal arts curriculum, Williams College provides undergraduate instruction in 25 academic departments and interdisciplinary programs including 36 majors in

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11284-453: Is nothing ordinary about the music." Sondheim later said: "Did I feel betrayed? I'm not sure I would put it like that. What did surprise me was the feeling around the Broadway community—if you can call it that, though I guess I will for lack of a better word—that they wanted Hal and me to fail." Sondheim and Furth continued to revise the show in subsequent years. An acclaimed feature documentary on

11501-477: Is often difficult to distinguish among the various kinds of musical theatre, including "musical play", "musical comedy", "operetta" and "light opera". Like opera, the singing in musical theatre is generally accompanied by an instrumental ensemble called a pit orchestra , located in a lowered area in front of the stage. While opera typically uses a conventional symphony orchestra , musicals are generally orchestrated for ensembles ranging from 27 players down to only

11718-464: Is primarily a singer and only secondarily an actor (and rarely needs to dance), a musical theatre performer is often an actor first but must also be a singer and dancer. Someone who is equally accomplished at all three is referred to as a "triple threat". Composers of music for musicals often consider the vocal demands of roles with musical theatre performers in mind. Today, large theatres that stage musicals generally use microphones and amplification of

11935-496: Is that she wanted to stand there in her bare feet, suffering for her art". After Do I Hear a Waltz? , Sondheim devoted himself solely to writing both music and lyrics for the theater—and in 1970, he began a collaboration with director Harold Prince resulting in a body of work that is considered one of the high water marks of musical theater history, with critic Howard Kissel writing that the duo had set "Broadway's highest standards". The first Sondheim show with Prince as director

12152-560: Is the 17th president of Williams, and took office on April 1, 2010. College Council (CC) was the student government of Williams College until 2020, when the student body voted to replace it with the Three Pillars plan: student-faculty committees, Williams Student Union (WSU), and Facilitators for Allocating Student Taxes (FAST). The WSU consists of 12 members (three representatives per class year) who are elected by their classes and serve semester terms. FAST members are responsible for managing

12369-608: Is the first woman to assume this role. In the last decade, construction has changed the look of the college. The addition of the $ 38 million Unified Science Center to the campus in 2001 set a tone of style and comprehensiveness for renovations and additions to campus buildings in the 21st century. This building unifies the formerly separate lab spaces of the physics , chemistry , and biology departments. In addition, it houses Schow Science Library, notable for its unified science materials holdings and architecture. It features vaulted ceilings and an atrium with windows into laboratories on

12586-415: Is to shoot to kill." Assassins was eventually staged on Broadway in 2004. Saturday Night was shelved until its 1997 production at London's Bridewell Theatre . The next year, its score was recorded; a revised version, with two new songs, ran off-Broadway at Second Stage Theatre in 2000 and at London's Jermyn Street Theatre in 2009. Sondheim and Weidman reunited during the late 1990s for Wise Guys ,

12803-589: The Ziegfeld Follies , that played in that theater between the world wars). The production also featured choreography and co-direction by Michael Bennett , who later created A Chorus Line . The original production starred Dorothy Collins , John McMartin , Alexis Smith , and Gene Nelson . It included the songs " I'm Still Here ", " Could I Leave You? ", and " Losing My Mind ". The production earned 11 Tony Award nominations, including Best Musical. It won 7 Tony Awards, including Best Original Score . The show

13020-407: The 1977 film of the same name starring Elizabeth Taylor , Dianna Rigg , Len Cariou , and Hermione Gingold . It was revived on Broadway in 2009 in a production starring Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury . Pacific Overtures (1976), with a book by John Weidman , was one of Sondheim's most unconventional efforts: it explored the westernization of Japan, and was originally presented in

13237-549: The 2014 film adaptation of Into the Woods , Sondheim wrote the new song "She'll Be Back", sung by The Witch, which was cut from the film. Musical theater Although music has been a part of dramatic presentations since ancient times, modern Western musical theatre emerged during the 19th century, with many structural elements established by the light opera works of Jacques Offenbach in France, Gilbert and Sullivan in Britain and

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13454-826: The Beta Theta Pi fraternity, he graduated magna cum laude in 1950. "A few painful years of struggle" followed, when Sondheim auditioned songs, lived in his father's dining room to save money, and spent time in Hollywood writing for the television series Topper . He devoured 1940s and 1950s films, and called cinema his "basic language"; his film knowledge got him through The $ 64,000 Question contestant tryouts. Sondheim disliked movie musicals, favoring classic dramas such as Citizen Kane , The Grapes of Wrath , and A Matter of Life and Death : "Studio directors like Michael Curtiz and Raoul Walsh ... were heroes of mine. They went from movie to movie to movie, and every third movie

13671-478: The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra conducted by David Loud . In Playbill , Steven Suskin called the concert "neither a new musical, a revival, nor a standard songbook revue; it is, rather, a staged-and-sung chamber jazz rendition of a string of songs ... Half of the songs come from Company and Follies ; most of the other Sondheim musicals are represented, including the lesser-known Passion and Road Show ". For

13888-959: The NCAA Division III New England Small College Athletic Conference as the Ephs . Prominent alumni include 9 Pulitzer Prize winners, 2 Nobel Prize laureates, a Fields medalist , a Lasker award recipient, 16 billionaires, 71 members of the United States Congress , 22 U.S. Governors , 4 U.S. Cabinet secretaries, an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court , a President of the United States , 3 prime ministers, CEOs and founders of Fortune 500 companies, multiple Emmy , Oscar , Tony , and Grammy award winners, and professional athletes. Other notable alumni include 40 Rhodes Scholars and 17 Marshall Scholarship recipients. Colonel Ephraim Williams

14105-559: The Pulitzer Prize . He also was awarded the Kennedy Center Honor in 1993 and a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015. A theater is named after him both on Broadway and in the West End of London . Film adaptations of his works include West Side Story (1961), Gypsy (1962), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966), A Little Night Music (1977), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), Into

14322-632: The Roaring Twenties , borrowing from vaudeville, music hall and other light entertainments, tended to emphasize big dance routines and popular songs at the expense of plot. Typical of the decade were lighthearted productions like Sally ; Lady, Be Good ; No, No, Nanette ; Oh, Kay! ; and Funny Face . Despite forgettable stories, these musicals featured stars such as Marilyn Miller and Fred Astaire and produced dozens of enduring popular songs by Kern, George and Ira Gershwin , Irving Berlin , Cole Porter and Rodgers and Hart . Popular music

14539-471: The Shubert Theatre on February 25, 1973, and ran for 601 performances and 12 previews. Clive Barnes of The New York Times wrote, " A Little Night Music is soft on the ears, easy on the eyes, and pleasant on the mind. It is less than brash, but more than brassy, and it should give a lot of pleasure. It is the remembrance of a few things past, and all to the sound of a waltz and the understanding smile of

14756-487: The Tudor period that involved music, dancing, singing and acting, often with expensive costumes and a complex stage design . These developed into sung plays that are recognizable as English operas, the first usually being thought of as The Siege of Rhodes (1656). In France, meanwhile, Molière turned several of his farcical comedies into musical entertainments with songs (music provided by Jean-Baptiste Lully ) and dance in

14973-806: The Upper West Side of Manhattan and, after his parents divorced, on a farm near Doylestown, Pennsylvania . The only child of affluent parents living in the San Remo at 145 Central Park West , he was described in Meryle Secrest 's biography Stephen Sondheim: A Life as an isolated, emotionally neglected child. When he lived in New York City, Sondheim attended the Ethical Culture Fieldston School . He spent several summers at Camp Androscoggin . His mother sent him to New York Military Academy in 1940. From 1942 to 1947, he attended George School ,

15190-445: The anthology series ABC Stage 67 and produced by Hubbell Robinson , it was broadcast on November 16, 1966. According to Sondheim and director Paul Bogart , the musical was written only because Goldman needed money for rent. The network disliked the title and Sondheim's alternative, A Little Night Music . After Sondheim finished Evening Primrose , Jerome Robbins asked him to adapt Bertolt Brecht 's The Measures Taken despite

15407-498: The humanities , arts , social sciences , and natural sciences . Williams offers an almost entirely undergraduate instruction, though there are two graduate programs in development economics and art history . The college maintains affiliations with the nearby Clark Art Institute and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), and has a close relationship with Exeter College, Oxford . The college competes in

15624-547: The minstrel shows ), followed by ragtime -tinged shows. Hundreds of musical comedies were staged on Broadway in the 1890s and early 20th century, composed of songs written in New York's Tin Pan Alley , including those by George M. Cohan , who worked to create an American style distinct from the Gilbert and Sullivan works. The most successful New York shows were often followed by extensive national tours. Meanwhile, musicals took over

15841-480: The "Golden Age" of American musical theatre. Americana was displayed on Broadway during the "Golden Age", as the wartime cycle of shows began to arrive. An example of this is On the Town (1944), written by Betty Comden and Adolph Green , composed by Leonard Bernstein and choreographed by Jerome Robbins . The story is set during wartime and concerns three sailors who are on a 24-hour shore leave in New York City, during which each falls in love. The show also gives

16058-618: The 1850s to the 1870s and Johann Strauss II in the 1870s and 1880s. Offenbach's fertile melodies, combined with his librettists' witty satire, formed a model for the musical theatre that followed. Adaptations of the French operettas (played in mostly bad, risqué translations), musical burlesques , music hall, pantomime and burletta dominated the London musical stage into the 1870s. In America, mid-19th century musical theatre entertainments included crude variety revue , which eventually developed into vaudeville , minstrel shows , which soon crossed

16275-504: The 1910s, the team of P. G. Wodehouse , Guy Bolton and Jerome Kern , following in the footsteps of Gilbert and Sullivan , created the " Princess Theatre shows" and paved the way for Kern's later work by showing that a musical could combine light, popular entertainment with continuity between its story and songs. Historian Gerald Bordman wrote: These shows built and polished the mold from which almost all later major musical comedies evolved. ... The characters and situations were, within

16492-542: The 1985 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the play, and it was revived on Broadway in 2008, and again in a limited run in 2017. They collaborated on Into the Woods (1987), a musical based on several Brothers Grimm fairy tales . Although Sondheim has been called the first composer to bring rap music to Broadway (with the Witch in the opening number of Into the Woods ), he attributed the first rap in theater to Meredith Willson 's "Rock Island" from The Music Man (1957). Into

16709-491: The 19th century through 1920 was gradually replaced by American innovation, especially after World War I, as Kern and other Tin Pan Alley composers began to bring new musical styles such as ragtime and jazz to the theatres, and the Shubert Brothers took control of the Broadway theatres. Musical theatre writer Andrew Lamb notes, "The operatic and theatrical styles of nineteenth-century social structures were replaced by

16926-412: The 19th century, such as music hall , melodrama and burletta , which were popularized partly because most London theatres were licensed only as music halls and not allowed to present plays without music. Colonial America did not have a significant theatre presence until 1752, when London entrepreneur William Hallam sent a company of actors to the colonies managed by his brother Lewis . In New York in

17143-459: The 2007 financial crisis led to its delay. College trustees initially balked at the Stetson-Sawyer project's cost, and revisited the idea of renovating Sawyer in its current location, an idea which proved not to be cost effective. The entire project includes construction of two new academic buildings, the removal of Sawyer Library from its current location, and the construction of a new library at

17360-513: The 2008 and 2009 report cards. In December 2008, President Morton O. Schapiro announced his departure from the college to become president of Northwestern University . On September 28, 2009, the presidential search committee announced the appointment of Adam Falk as the 17th president of Williams College. Falk, dean of the Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins University , began his term on April 1, 2010. Dean of

17577-459: The 2008-09 school year, the college eliminated student loans from all financial aid packages in favor of grants. The college was the fourth institution in the United States to do so, following Princeton University, Amherst College, and Davidson College . However, in February 2010, the college announced it would re-introduce loans to its financial aid packages beginning with the Class of 2015 due to

17794-810: The 5th century BCE. The music from the ancient forms is lost, however, and they had little influence on later development of musical theatre. In the 12th and 13th centuries, religious dramas taught the liturgy . Groups of actors would use outdoor Pageant wagons (stages on wheels) to tell each part of the story. Poetic forms sometimes alternated with the prose dialogues, and liturgical chants gave way to new melodies. The European Renaissance saw older forms evolve into two antecedents of musical theatre: commedia dell'arte , where raucous clowns improvised familiar stories, and later, opera buffa . In England, Elizabethan and Jacobean plays frequently included music, and short musical plays began to be included in an evenings' dramatic entertainments. Court masques developed during

18011-545: The Angry Inch and other shows in recent decades. Parade is a sensitive exploration of both anti-Semitism and historical American racism, and Ragtime similarly explores the experience of immigrants and minorities in America. After the success of Hair , rock musicals flourished in the 1970s, with Jesus Christ Superstar , Godspell , The Rocky Horror Show , Evita and Two Gentlemen of Verona . Some of those began as " concept albums " which were then adapted to

18228-666: The Atlantic had little money to spend on entertainment, and only a few stage shows anywhere exceeded a run of 500 performances during the decade. The revue The Band Wagon (1931) starred dancing partners Fred Astaire and his sister Adele , while Porter's Anything Goes (1934) confirmed Ethel Merman 's position as the First Lady of musical theatre, a title she maintained for many years. Coward and Novello continued to deliver old fashioned, sentimental musicals, such as The Dancing Years , while Rodgers and Hart returned from Hollywood to create

18445-425: The Atlantic to Britain, and Victorian burlesque, first popularized in the US by British troupes. A hugely successful musical entertainment that premiered in New York in 1866, The Black Crook , combined dance and some original music that helped to tell the story. The spectacular production, famous for its skimpy costumes, ran for a record-breaking 474 performances. The same year, The Black Domino/Between You, Me and

18662-590: The Committee on Coordinate Education's final report, the trustees voted in June 1969 to regularly admit women undergraduate students in fall 1971. The college welcomed 137 women as first-year students in fall 1971. They were joined by 90 transfer and exchange students from women's colleges who, during their junior and senior year, participated in the Ten College Exchange Program which Sawyer helped to establish in

18879-577: The Declaration of Independence. The Chapin Library's science collection includes a first edition of Nicolaus Copernicus 's De revolutionibus orbium coelestium , as well as first editions of books by Tycho Brahe , Johannes Kepler , Galileo , Isaac Newton , and other major figures. The Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA), with over 12,000 works (only a fraction of which are displayed at any one time) in its permanent collection, serves as an educational resource for both undergraduates and students in

19096-738: The English-speaking stage by competition from the ubiquitous Edwardian musical comedies, operettas returned to London and Broadway in 1907 with The Merry Widow , and adaptations of continental operettas became direct competitors with musicals. Franz Lehár and Oscar Straus composed new operettas that were popular in English until World War I. In America, Victor Herbert produced a string of enduring operettas including The Fortune Teller (1898), Babes in Toyland (1903), Mlle. Modiste (1905), The Red Mill (1906) and Naughty Marietta (1910). In

19313-461: The Faculty William G. Wagner took the position of interim president beginning in June 2009, and continued in that capacity until President-elect Falk took office. In 2014, Williams College brought their endowment above the 2 billion dollar mark. On March 11, 2018, former dean of the college at Brown University Maud Mandel was selected to be the 18th president of Williams College. Mandel assumed

19530-456: The General Court to dispute the delay in establishment of the free school, and in 1795, the Massachusetts legislature finally granted the school its charter. The Williamstown Free School opened with 15 students on October 26, 1791. The first president was Ebenezer Fitch . Not long after its founding, the school's trustees petitioned the Massachusetts legislature to convert the free school to

19747-574: The Golden Age, automotive companies and other large corporations began to hire Broadway talent to write corporate musicals , private shows only seen by their employees or customers. The 1950s ended with Rodgers and Hammerstein 's last hit, The Sound of Music , which also became another hit for Mary Martin. It ran for 1,443 performances and shared the Tony Award for Best Musical. Together with its extremely successful 1965 film version , it has become one of

19964-782: The HBO feature-length documentary Six by Sondheim , which he executive produced with former New York Times theater critic Frank Rich , a longtime champion of Sondheim's work. Sondheim himself acts and sings in the documentary as Joe, the cynical theater producer in the song "Opening Doors". Sondheim collaborated with Wynton Marsalis on A Bed and a Chair: A New York Love Affair , an Encores! concert on November 13–17, 2013, at New York City Center . Directed by John Doyle with choreography by Parker Esse, it consisted of "more than two dozen Sondheim compositions, each piece newly reimagined by Marsalis". The concert featured Bernadette Peters , Jeremy Jordan , Norm Lewis , Cyrille Aimée , four dancers, and

20181-569: The London stage in the Gay Nineties , led by producer George Edwardes , who perceived that audiences wanted a new alternative to the Savoy -style comic operas and their intellectual, political, absurdist satire. He experimented with a modern-dress, family-friendly musical theatre style, with breezy, popular songs, snappy, romantic banter, and stylish spectacle at the Gaiety and his other theatres. These drew on

20398-578: The Milham Planetarium, which uses a Zeiss Skymaster ZKP3/B optomechanical projector and an Ansible digital projector , both installed in 2005. The Hopkins Observatory's 0.6-m DFM reflecting telescope (1991) is installed elsewhere on the campus. Williams joins with Wellesley , Wesleyan, Middlebury , Colgate , Vassar , Swarthmore , and Haverford / Bryn Mawr to form the Keck Northeast Astronomy Consortium, sponsored for over

20615-551: The Mountains (1,352 performances) and especially Chu Chin Chow . Its run of 2,238 performances was more than twice as long as any previous musical, setting a record that stood for nearly forty years. Even a revival of The Beggar's Opera held the stage for 1,463 performances. Revues like The Bing Boys Are Here in Britain, and those of Florenz Ziegfeld and his imitators in America, were also extraordinarily popular. The musicals of

20832-626: The Olmsted Brothers would advise the gradual transformation of campus design for six decades. The present-day grounds layout reflects much of the design intent of the Olmsted Brothers. Williams College is the site of the Hopkins Observatory , the oldest extant astronomical observatory in the United States. Erected in 1836–1838, it now contains the Mehlin Museum of Astronomy, including Alvan Clark 's first telescope (from 1852), as well as

21049-647: The Post was the first show to call itself a "musical comedy." In 1874, Evangeline or The Belle of Arcadia , by Edward E. Rice and J. Cheever Goodwin , based loosely on Longfellow’s Evangeline , with an original American story and music, opened successfully in New York and was revived in Boston, New York, and in repeated tours. Comedians Edward Harrigan and Tony Hart produced and starred in musicals on Broadway between 1878 ( The Mulligan Guard Picnic ) and 1885. These musical comedies featured characters and situations taken from

21266-575: The Roof (1964). Bob Fosse choreographed for Abbott in The Pajama Game (1956) and Damn Yankees (1957), injecting playful sexuality into those hits. He was later the director-choreographer for Sweet Charity (1968), Pippin (1972) and Chicago (1975). Other notable director-choreographers have included Gower Champion , Tommy Tune , Michael Bennett , Gillian Lynne and Susan Stroman . Prominent directors have included Hal Prince , who also got his start with Abbott, and Trevor Nunn . During

21483-459: The Shrew for Kiss Me, Kate (1948, 1,077 performances). The American musicals overwhelmed the old-fashioned British Coward/Novello-style shows, one of the last big successes of which was Novello's Perchance to Dream (1945, 1,021 performances). The formula for the Golden Age musicals reflected one or more of four widely held perceptions of the "American dream": That stability and worth derives from

21700-491: The Times Square area until the 1920s and 1930s. New York runs lagged far behind those in London, but Laura Keene 's "musical burletta" Seven Sisters (1860) shattered previous New York musical theatre record, with a run of 253 performances. Around 1850, the French composer Hervé was experimenting with a form of comic musical theatre he called opérette . The best known composers of operetta were Jacques Offenbach from

21917-414: The United States and Britain, there are vibrant musical theatre scenes in continental Europe, Asia, Australasia, Canada and Latin America. Since the 20th century, the "book musical" has been defined as a musical play where songs and dances are fully integrated into a well-made story with serious dramatic goals and which is able to evoke genuine emotions other than laughter. The three main components of

22134-430: The West End in the 21st century have been presented in one act. Moments of greatest dramatic intensity in a book musical are often performed in song. Proverbially, "when the emotion becomes too strong for speech, you sing; when it becomes too strong for song, you dance." In a book musical, a song is ideally crafted to suit the character (or characters) and their situation within the story; although there have been times in

22351-665: The Williams–Exeter Programme at Exeter College of Oxford University ; and Williams in Africa. Williams has a close relationship with Exeter College , one of the oldest constituent colleges of Oxford University . In the early 1980s, Williams purchased a group of houses, today known as the Ephraim Williams House, on Banbury Road and Lathbury Road , in North Oxford . The Williams-Exeter Programme at Oxford (WEPO)

22568-448: The Woods (2014), and West Side Story (2021). Sondheim was born on March 22, 1930, into a Jewish family in New York City, the son of Etta Janet ("Foxy"; née Fox; 1897–1992) and Herbert Sondheim (1895–1966). His paternal grandparents, Isaac and Rosa, were German Jews , and his maternal grandparents, Joseph and Bessie, were Lithuanian Jews from Vilnius . His father manufactured dresses designed by his mother. The composer grew up on

22785-488: The Woods was revived on Broadway in 2002 and at the St. James Theatre in 2022. Sondheim's and Lapine's last collaboration on a musical was the rhapsodic Passion (1994), adapted from Ettore Scola 's Italian film Passione D'Amore . With a run of 280 performances, Passion was the shortest-running show to win a Tony Award for Best Musical . Assassins opened off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons on December 18, 1990, with

23002-740: The actors to age in real time. An Off-Broadway revival starring Jonathan Groff , Daniel Radcliffe , and Lindsay Mendez ran from November 2022 to January 2023 at the New York Theatre Workshop ; it moved to Broadway in fall 2023. Merrily ' s failure greatly affected Sondheim; he was ready to quit theater and do movies, create video games or write mysteries: "I wanted to find something to satisfy myself that does not involve Broadway and dealing with all those people who hate me and hate Hal." After Merrily , Sondheim and Prince did not collaborate again until their 2003 production of Bounce . Sondheim decided "that there are better places to start

23219-507: The actors' singing voices in a way that would generally be disapproved of in an operatic context. Some works, including those by George Gershwin , Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim , have been made into both musical theatre and operatic productions. Similarly, some older operettas or light operas (such as The Pirates of Penzance by Gilbert and Sullivan ) have been produced in modern adaptations that treat them as musicals. For some works, production styles are almost as important as

23436-435: The attendant musicology that comes in graduate school. But I knew I wanted to write for the theater, so I wanted someone who did not disdain theater music." Barrow suggested that Sondheim study with Milton Babbitt , whom Sondheim called "a frustrated show composer" with whom he formed "a perfect combination". When they met, Babbitt was working on a musical for Mary Martin based on the myth of Helen of Troy . The two met once

23653-424: The board but serving up to 15 years, although not beyond their seventieth birthday. The current chair of the board of trustees is Liz Robinson. The board appoints as senior executive officer of the college a president who is also a member of and the presiding officer of the faculty. Nine senior administrators report to the president, including the dean of the faculty , provost , and dean of the college. Adam F. Falk

23870-407: The board voted to move the college to Amherst, Massachusetts . In 1821, the president of the college, Zephaniah Swift Moore , who had accepted his position believing the college would move east, decided to proceed with the move. He took 15 students with him, and re-founded the college under the name of Amherst College . Some students and professors decided to stay at Williams and were allowed to keep

24087-472: The board. In 1976, Pamela G. Carlton '76 became the first woman alumni trustee and Janet Brown '73, the first woman graduate of Williams to serve on the executive committee of the Society of Alumni. As of 2021 , 45.6% of full-time faculty and 51.6% of the undergraduate class are women-identifying at Williams. In July 2018, Maud Mandel began her tenure as the 18th and current president of Williams College. She

24304-518: The book The Songs of Williams , a collection of songs sung at the college. During World War II , Williams College was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program which offered students a path to a Navy commission. Originally a men's college , Williams became co-educational in 1970. Fraternities were also phased out during this period, beginning in 1962. Following

24521-466: The characters express their ideas. It defied musical conventions by raising its first act curtain not on a bevy of chorus girls, but rather on a woman churning butter, with an off-stage voice singing the opening lines of Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin' unaccompanied. It drew rave reviews, set off a box-office frenzy and received a Pulitzer Prize . Brooks Atkinson wrote in The New York Times that

24738-408: The charter was revoked within a year when Massachusetts Governor Francis Bernard succumbed to pressure from Harvard College , which opposed the creation of a second institution of higher learning in the colonial-era Province of Massachusetts Bay . In 1765, the west township was incorporated as Williamstown. Five years later, the town's proprietors brought the executors of Williams' estate before

24955-503: The college's changed financial situation. In January 2007 the board voted unanimously to reduce college CO 2 emissions 10% below 1990 levels by 2020, or roughly 50% below 2006 levels. To meet those goals, the college set up the Zilkha Center for Environmental Initiatives and has undertaken an energy audit and efficiency timeline. Williams received an 'A−' on the 2010 College Sustainability Report Card, following 'B+' grades on both

25172-488: The college, Doris DeKeyselingk, oversaw the Russian department beginning in 1958. During his time as president of Williams College, John E. Sawyer officially initiated the process of coeducation. After overseeing the abolition of fraternities, Sawyer created a faculty-trustee committee, the Committee on Coordinate Education and Related Questions, in 1967 to explore options for coeducation and co-ordinate education. In response to

25389-546: The comparatively frivolous musicals and sentimental operettas of the decade, Broadway's Show Boat (1927) represented an even more complete integration of book and score than the Princess Theatre musicals, with dramatic themes told through the music, dialogue, setting and movement. This was accomplished by combining the lyricism of Kern's music with the skillful libretto of Oscar Hammerstein II . One historian wrote, "Here we come to

25606-471: The composer's general dislike of Brecht's work. Robbins wanted to adapt another Brecht play, The Exception and the Rule , and asked John Guare to adapt the book. Leonard Bernstein had not written for the stage in some time, and his contract as conductor of the New York Philharmonic was ending. Sondheim was invited to Robbins's house in the hope that Guare would convince him to write the lyrics for

25823-503: The continent, singspiel , comédie en vaudeville , opéra comique , zarzuela and other forms of light musical entertainment were emerging. The Beggar's Opera was the first recorded long-running play of any kind, running for 62 successive performances in 1728. It would take almost a century afterwards before any play broke 100 performances, but the record soon reached 150 in the late 1820s. Other musical theatre forms developed in England by

26040-452: The controversy surrounding it, ran for 108 performances. Rodgers and Hart's I'd Rather Be Right (1937) was a political satire with George M. Cohan as President Franklin D. Roosevelt , and Kurt Weill 's Knickerbocker Holiday depicted New York City's early history while good-naturedly satirizing Roosevelt's good intentions. The motion picture mounted a challenge to the stage. Silent films had presented only limited competition, but by

26257-543: The core of Frank Loesser 's and Abe Burrows ' Guys and Dolls , (1950, 1,200 performances); and the Gold Rush was the setting for Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe 's Paint Your Wagon (1951). The relatively brief seven-month run of that show did not discourage Lerner and Loewe from collaborating again, this time on My Fair Lady (1956), an adaptation of George Bernard Shaw 's Pygmalion starring Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews , which at 2,717 performances held

26474-432: The credit. Sondheim later said he wished "someone stuffed a handkerchief in my mouth because it would have been nice to get that extra percentage". After West Side Story opened, Shevelove lamented the lack of "lowbrow comedy" on Broadway and mentioned a possible musical based on Plautus 's Roman comedies. Sondheim was interested in the idea and called a friend, Larry Gelbart , to co-write the script. The show went through

26691-494: The decade was The Black and White Minstrel Show (1962), which played for 4,344 performances. Two men had considerable impact on musical theatre history beginning in this decade: Stephen Sondheim and Jerry Herman . The first project for which Sondheim wrote both music and lyrics was A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962, 964 performances), with a book based on the works of Plautus by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart , starring Zero Mostel . Sondheim moved

26908-403: The earlier musical forms of comic opera and operetta. The Geisha (1896) was one of the most successful in the 1890s, running for more than two years and achieving great international success. The Belle of New York (1898) became the first American musical to run for over a year in London. The British musical comedy Florodora (1899) was a popular success on both sides of the Atlantic, as

27125-406: The early morning. Bernstein's score, which was supposed to be light, was influenced by his need to make a musical statement. Stuart Ostrow , who worked with Sondheim on The Girls Upstairs , agreed to produce the musical, initially titled A Pray by Blecht , then The Race to Urga . An opening night was scheduled, but during auditions Robbins asked to be excused for a moment. When he did not return,

27342-409: The end of the 1920s, films like The Jazz Singer could be presented with synchronized sound. "Talkie" films at low prices effectively killed off vaudeville by the early 1930s. Despite the economic woes of the 1930s and the competition from film, the musical survived. In fact, it continued to evolve thematically beyond the gags and showgirls musicals of the Gay Nineties and Roaring Twenties and

27559-533: The end of the Golden Age, several shows tackled Jewish subjects and issues, such as Fiddler on the Roof , Milk and Honey , Blitz! and later Rags . The original concept that became West Side Story was set in the Lower East Side during Easter-Passover celebrations; the rival gangs were to be Jewish and Italian Catholic . The creative team later decided that the Polish (white) vs. Puerto Rican conflict

27776-589: The ensuing meeting inspired them to take the Gospel abroad. The students went on to build the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions , the first American organization to send missionaries overseas. The Haystack Monument near Mission Park on the Williams Campus commemorates the historic " Haystack Prayer Meeting ". By 1815, Williams had only two buildings and 58 students and was in financial trouble, so

27993-481: The entrance exam at the time, and which would most likely not have been available in the local schools of Guilford, Vermont , where Festus was raised. In 1806, a student prayer meeting gave rise to the American Foreign Mission Movement. In August of that year, five students met in the maple grove of Sloan's Meadow to pray. A thunderstorm drove them to the shelter of a haystack, and the fervor of

28210-409: The everyday life of New York's lower classes. They starred high quality singers ( Lillian Russell , Vivienne Segal and Fay Templeton ) instead of the ladies of questionable repute who had starred in earlier musical forms. In 1879, The Brook by Nate Salsbury was another national success with contemporary American dance styles and an American story about "members of an acting company taking a trip down

28427-438: The first Broadway show in which an African-American, Ethel Waters , starred alongside white actors. Waters' numbers included " Supper Time ", a woman's lament for her husband who has been lynched. The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess (1935) featured an all African-American cast and blended operatic, folk and jazz idioms. The Cradle Will Rock (1937), directed by Orson Welles , was a highly political pro- union piece that, despite

28644-491: The first-term assistant professors were women. Throughout the 1970s, Williams College experienced an increase of women in high administrative and advisory positions as well. In February 1970, the college hired its first female dean, Nancy McIntire. In October 1971, at age 29, Gail Walker Haslett was elected as a three-year term trustee on the Williams College Board of Trustees. She was the first woman to ever serve on

28861-515: The founding of the state of Israel, and continuing with the blockbuster hits Hello, Dolly! (1964, 2,844 performances), Mame (1966, 1,508 performances), and La Cage aux Folles (1983, 1,761 performances). Even his less successful shows like Dear World (1969) and Mack and Mabel (1974) have had memorable scores ( Mack and Mabel was later reworked into a London hit). Writing both words and music, many of Herman's show tunes have become popular standards, including " Hello, Dolly! ", "We Need

29078-461: The genre's traditional subjects, while addressing darker elements of the human experience. His music and lyrics are tinged with complexity, sophistication, and ambivalence about various aspects of life. Sondheim's interest in musical theater began at a young age, and he was mentored by Oscar Hammerstein II . He began his career by writing the lyrics for West Side Story (1957) and Gypsy (1959). He transitioned to writing both music and lyrics for

29295-482: The gowns he and his classmates wore to graduation in 1887. Seven years later he advised the Inter-Collegiate Commission on Academic Costume, which met at Columbia University , and established the current system of U.S. academic dress . One reason gowns were adopted in the late 19th century was to eliminate the differences in apparel between rich and poor students. Gardner Cotrell Leonard went on to edit

29512-409: The graduate art history program. Notable works include Morning in a City by Edward Hopper , a commissioned wall painting by Sol LeWitt , and a commissioned outdoor sculpture and landscape work by Louise Bourgeois entitled Eyes . Although often overshadowed by the neighboring and much larger Clark Art Institute and Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), WCMA remains one of

29729-472: The history of the musical (e.g. from the 1890s to the 1920s) when this integration between music and story has been tenuous. As The New York Times critic Ben Brantley described the ideal of song in theatre when reviewing the 2008 revival of Gypsy : "There is no separation at all between song and character, which is what happens in those uncommon moments when musicals reach upward to achieve their ideal reasons to be." Typically, many fewer words are sung in

29946-518: The impression of a country with an uncertain future, as the sailors and their women also have. Irving Berlin used sharpshooter Annie Oakley 's career as a basis for his Annie Get Your Gun (1946, 1,147 performances); Burton Lane , E. Y. Harburg and Fred Saidy combined political satire with Irish whimsy for their fantasy Finian's Rainbow (1947, 725 performances); and Cole Porter found inspiration in William Shakespeare 's The Taming of

30163-447: The interplay of lyrics and music in his shows. Some of Sondheim's notable innovations include a show presented in reverse ( Merrily We Roll Along ) and the above-mentioned Anyone Can Whistle , in which the first act ends with the cast informing the audience that they are mad. Jerry Herman played a significant role in American musical theatre, beginning with his first Broadway production, Milk and Honey (1961, 563 performances), about

30380-456: The land, which was at the time relatively worthless. Moore died just two years later after founding Amherst, and was succeeded by Heman Humphrey , a trustee of Williams College. Edward Dorr Griffin was appointed President of Williams and is widely credited with saving Williams during his 15-year tenure. A Williams student, Gardner Cotrell Leonard, of Albany, New York, whose family owned the city's Cotrell & Leonard department store, designed

30597-548: The late 17th century. These influenced a brief period of English opera by composers such as John Blow and Henry Purcell . From the 18th century, the most popular forms of musical theatre in Britain were ballad operas , like John Gay 's The Beggar's Opera , that included lyrics written to the tunes of popular songs of the day (often spoofing opera), and later pantomime , which developed from commedia dell'arte, and comic opera with mostly romantic plot lines, like Michael Balfe 's The Bohemian Girl (1845). Meanwhile, on

30814-402: The limitations of musical comedy license, believable and the humor came from the situations or the nature of the characters. Kern's exquisitely flowing melodies were employed to further the action or develop characterization. ... [Edwardian] musical comedy was often guilty of inserting songs in a hit-or-miss fashion. The Princess Theatre musicals brought about a change in approach. P. G. Wodehouse,

31031-450: The long-run record for many years. Popular Hollywood films were made of all of these musicals. Two hits by British creators in this decade were The Boy Friend (1954), which ran for 2,078 performances in London and marked Andrews' American debut, and Salad Days (1954), which broke the British long-run record with a run of 2,283 performances. Another record was set by The Threepenny Opera , which ran for 2,707 performances, becoming

31248-531: The longest-running off-Broadway musical until The Fantasticks . The production also broke ground by showing that musicals could be profitable off-Broadway in a small-scale, small orchestra format. This was confirmed in 1959 when a revival of Jerome Kern and P. G. Wodehouse 's Leave It to Jane ran for more than two years. The 1959–1960 off-Broadway season included a dozen musicals and revues including Little Mary Sunshine , The Fantasticks and Ernest in Love ,

31465-439: The lyrics, were under contract in Hollywood. He said that although he was not a big fan of Sondheim's music, he enjoyed the lyrics from Saturday Night and he could audition for Bernstein. The next day, Sondheim met and played for Bernstein, who said he would let him know. Sondheim wanted to write music and lyrics; he consulted with Hammerstein, who said, as Sondheim related in a 2008 New York Times video interview, "Look, you have

31682-630: The main character was a woman, Bobbie, portrayed by Katrina Lenk ). The 2006 and 2021 productions won the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical . Follies (1971), with a book by James Goldman , opened on April 4, 1971, at the Winter Garden Theatre and ran for 522 performances after 12 previews. The plot centers on a reunion, in a crumbling Broadway theater scheduled for demolition, of performers in Weismann's Follies (a musical revue, based on

31899-528: The making of the original cast recording shortly after the show opened on Broadway in his 1970 film Original Cast Album: Company . Stritch, Sondheim, and producer Thomas Z. Shepard are featured prominently. Company was revived on Broadway in 1995, 2006, and 2020/2021 (the last revival began previews in March 2020, but shut down before resuming in November 2021 due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic ; in this revival,

32116-449: The mid-to-late 1960s. The graduating class of 1975 was the first fully co-educational class to graduate from Williams. The college's admission of women undergraduate students coincided with the diversification of faculty and staff. An affirmative action program, launched in 1972 by President John Chandler , reinforced equal opportunity employment. In addition to facilitating the hiring and retention of African-American staff and faculty,

32333-815: The most famous musicals through the decades that followed include My Fair Lady (1956), The Fantasticks (1960), Hair (1967), A Chorus Line (1975), Les Misérables (1985), The Phantom of the Opera (1986), Rent (1996), Wicked (2003) and Hamilton (2015). Musicals are performed around the world. They may be presented in large venues, such as big-budget Broadway or West End productions in New York City or London. Alternatively, musicals may be staged in smaller venues, such as off-Broadway , off-off-Broadway , regional theatre , fringe theatre , or community theatre productions, or on tour . Musicals are often presented by amateur and school groups in churches, schools and other performance spaces. In addition to

32550-445: The most observant, literate and witty lyricist of his day, and the team of Bolton, Wodehouse and Kern had an influence felt to this day. The theatre-going public needed escapist entertainment during the dark times of World War I , and they flocked to the theatre. The 1919 hit musical Irene ran for 670 performances, a Broadway record that held until 1938. The British theatre public supported far longer runs like that of The Maid of

32767-567: The most popular musicals in history. In 1960, The Fantasticks was first produced off-Broadway. This intimate allegorical show would quietly run for over 40 years at the Sullivan Street Theatre in Greenwich Village , becoming by far the longest-running musical in history. Its authors produced other innovative works in the 1960s, such as Celebration and I Do! I Do! , the first two-character Broadway musical. The 1960s would see

32984-471: The music and lyrics was A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum , which opened in 1962 and ran for 964 performances. The book , based on farces by Plautus , was by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart . The show won six Tony Awards (including Best Musical ) and had the longest Broadway run of any show for which Sondheim wrote both music and lyrics. Sondheim had participated in three straight hits, but his next show—1964's Anyone Can Whistle —was

33201-502: The music and lyrics, Merman refused to let another first-time composer write for her and demanded that Jule Styne write the music. Sondheim, concerned that writing lyrics again would pigeonhole him as a lyricist, called his mentor for advice. Hammerstein told him he should take the job, because writing a vehicle for a star would be a good learning experience. Sondheim agreed; Gypsy opened on May 21, 1959, and ran for 702 performances. The first Broadway production for which Sondheim wrote

33418-423: The music for a story about Rose Thompson Hovick , the mother of the titular stripper Gypsy Rose Lee . Although directors and choreographers have had a major influence on musical theatre style since at least the 19th century, George Abbott and his collaborators and successors took a central role in integrating movement and dance fully into musical theatre productions in the Golden Age. Abbott introduced ballet as

33635-480: The musical beyond its concentration on the romantic plots typical of earlier eras; his work tended to be darker, exploring the grittier sides of life both present and past. Other early Sondheim works include Anyone Can Whistle (1964, which ran only nine performances, despite having stars Lee Remick and Angela Lansbury ), and the successful Company (1970), Follies (1971) and A Little Night Music (1973). Later, Sondheim found inspiration in unlikely sources:

33852-460: The musical include "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd", "The Worst Pies in London", "Pretty Women", "A Little Priest", " Not While I'm Around ", "By the Sea", and "Johanna". The production earned 9 Tony Award nominations and won 8 awards, including Best Musical , Best Original Score, Best Actress, and Best Actor. Richard Eder of The New York Times wrote: "Mr. Sondheim's lyrics can be endlessly inventive. There

34069-475: The nearby Clark Art Institute and Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), and has a close relationship with Exeter College , Oxford University , where the school runs a year-long study abroad program for juniors. The college competes in the NCAA Division III New England Small College Athletic Conference as the Ephs . Their athletic program has been highly successful, winning 22 of 29 College Directors' Cups for NCAA Division III. Williams

34286-418: The necessary encouragement for other gifted writers to create musical plays of their own". The two collaborators created an extraordinary collection of some of musical theatre's best loved and most enduring classics, including Carousel (1945), South Pacific (1949), The King and I (1951) and The Sound of Music (1959). Some of these musicals treat more serious subject matter than most earlier shows:

34503-520: The new Sawyer Library was completed in 2014, after which the old Sawyer Library was razed. After several years of planning, the college decided to group undergraduates starting with the Class of 2010 into four geographically coherent clusters, or "Neighborhoods". Since the fall of 2006, first-years have been housed in Sage Hall, Williams Hall and Mission Park, while the former first-year dormitories East College, Lehman Hall, Fayerweather, and Morgan, joined

34720-418: The off-Broadway revue The Mad Show . The song was credited to "Esteban Río Nido", Spanish for "Stephen River Nest", and in the show's playbill the lyrics were credited to " Nom De Plume ". That year Goldman and Sondheim hit a creative wall on The Girls Upstairs , and Goldman asked Sondheim about writing a TV musical. The result was Evening Primrose , with Anthony Perkins and Charmian Carr . Written for

34937-582: The only one. I've checked with other people. People expect more of you and you're aware of it and you shouldn't be." In December 2007, he said that in addition to continuing work on Bounce , he was "nibbling at a couple of things with John Weidman and James Lapine". Lapine prepared the multimedia production iSondheim: aMusical Revue , which was scheduled to open in April 2009 at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta ; it

35154-407: The opening of South Pacific , Hammerstein's musical with Richard Rodgers . The comic musical Sondheim wrote at George School, By George , was a success among his peers and buoyed his self-esteem. When he asked Hammerstein to evaluate it as though he had no knowledge of its author, he said it was the worst thing he had ever seen: "But if you want to know why it's terrible, I'll tell you." They spent

35371-651: The opening of Japan to Western trade for Pacific Overtures (1976), a legendary murderous barber seeking revenge in the Industrial Age of London for Sweeney Todd (1979), the paintings of Georges Seurat for Sunday in the Park with George (1984), fairy tales for Into the Woods (1987), and a collection of presidential assassins in Assassins (1990). While some critics have argued that some of Sondheim's musicals lack commercial appeal, others have praised their lyrical sophistication and musical complexity, as well as

35588-498: The orchestra that "weav[es] together excerpts of the score's famous melodies." There are various Eastern traditions of theatre that include music, such as Chinese opera , Taiwanese opera , Japanese Noh and Indian musical theatre , including Sanskrit drama , Indian classical dance , Parsi theatre and Yakshagana . India has, since the 20th century, produced numerous musical films, referred to as " Bollywood " musicals, and in Japan

35805-421: The original play did not lend itself to musicalization, they began writing a musical version. The project had many difficulties, including Rodgers's alcoholism. Sondheim later called it the one project he truly regretted writing, given that the reasons he wrote it—as a favor to Mary, as a favor to Hammerstein, as an opportunity to work again with Laurents, and as an opportunity to make money—were not reasons to write

36022-459: The original production, for example, Bob Fosse 's choreography in Chicago . There is no fixed length for a musical. While it can range from a short one-act entertainment to several acts and several hours in length (or even a multi-evening presentation), most musicals range from one and a half to three hours. Musicals are usually presented in two acts, with one short intermission , and the first act

36239-643: The other hand, many successful musical theatre works have been adapted for musical films , such as West Side Story , My Fair Lady , The Sound of Music , Oliver! and Chicago . Musical theatre is closely related to the theatrical form of opera, but the two are usually distinguished by weighing a number of factors. First, musicals generally have a greater focus on spoken dialogue. Some musicals, however, are entirely accompanied and sung-through, while some operas, such as Die Zauberflöte , and most operettas , have some unaccompanied dialogue. Second, musicals usually include more dancing as an essential part of

36456-627: The premier attractions of the Berkshires. Because the museum is intended primarily for educational purposes, admission is free for all students. Located in front of the West College dormitory, the Hopkins gate serves as a memorial to brothers Mark and Albert Hopkins. Both made lasting contributions to the Williams College community. Mark was appointed as president of the college in 1836, while Albert

36673-432: The president originally lived in a nearby house where Hopkins Hall now stands. The house has been renovated multiple times since originally being built, including over $ 500,000 in renovations in 2000 and 2001. Since its creation in 1793, Williams College has had 17 full-time presidents and two interim presidents. The 18th president and current president is Maud Mandel , who began her tenure on July 1, 2018. Williams

36890-557: The process of coeducation in the late 1960s, women integrated the college as early as the 1930s. Beatrice Irene Wasserscheid (née Acly) was the first woman to be awarded a Williams degree after successfully petitioning the trustees to pursue a master of arts degree in American literature. She received her master's degree in June 1931. That same decade, in 1935, Emily Cleland became the first woman to teach at Williams when she finished teaching her late husband's geology course after he died in an accident. The first tenured woman faculty member at

37107-430: The program prioritized hiring women. As a result of the efforts of the dean of faculty and the provost in collaboration with "Committee W", a women-led group dedicated to fulfilling the program's mission, the number of women faculty steadily rose. From the inception of Williams's affirmative action program in 1972 to its revision in 1975, the proportion of women full-time faculty increased from 4.5% to 11.7%. By 1975, 34% of

37324-507: The rear of a renovated Stetson Hall (which served as the college library prior to Sawyer's construction). The academic buildings, temporarily named North Academic Building and South Academic Building, were completed in fall 2008. In the spring of 2009, South Academic Building was renamed Schapiro Hall in honor of former president Morton O. Schapiro . In spring 2010 the North Academic Building was renamed Hollander Hall. Construction of

37541-758: The relatively narrow confines of the 1950s. Rock music would be used in several Broadway musicals, beginning with Hair , which featured not only rock music but also nudity and controversial opinions about the Vietnam War , race relations and other social issues. After Show Boat and Porgy and Bess , and as the struggle in America and elsewhere for minorities' civil rights progressed, Hammerstein, Harold Arlen , Yip Harburg and others were emboldened to write more musicals and operas that aimed to normalize societal toleration of minorities and urged racial harmony. Early Golden Age works that focused on racial tolerance included Finian's Rainbow and South Pacific . Towards

37758-442: The remaining residential buildings as upperclass housing. During the spring 2009 semester, a committee formed to evaluate the neighborhood system, and released a report the following fall. From 2003 through 2008, Williams conducted a capital campaign with the goal of raising $ 400 million by September 2008. The college reached $ 400 million at the end of June 2007. By the close of the campaign, Williams had raised $ 500.2 million. As of

37975-459: The request that it was "weird...it's like asking your father to inscribe something." Reading the inscription ("For Stevie, My Friend and Teacher") choked up the composer, who said, "That describes Oscar better than anything I could say." Sondheim began attending Williams College , a liberal arts college in Williamstown, Massachusetts , whose theater program attracted him. His first teacher there

38192-476: The rest of the day going over the musical, and Sondheim later said, "In that afternoon I learned more about songwriting and the musical theater than most people learn in a lifetime." Hammerstein designed a course of sorts for Sondheim on constructing a musical. He had the young composer write four musicals, each with one of the following conditions: None of the "assignment" musicals were produced professionally. High Tor and Mary Poppins have never been produced:

38409-451: The revolution begun by Show Boat , by tightly integrating all the aspects of musical theatre, with a cohesive plot, songs that furthered the action of the story, and featured dream ballets and other dances that advanced the plot and developed the characters, rather than using dance as an excuse to parade scantily clad women across the stage. Rodgers and Hammerstein hired ballet choreographer Agnes de Mille , who used everyday motions to help

38626-406: The rights holder for the original High Tor refused permission (though a musical version by Arthur Schwartz was produced for television in 1956), and Mary Poppins was unfinished. Hammerstein's death Hammerstein died of stomach cancer on August 23, 1960, aged 65. Sondheim later recalled that Hammerstein had given him a portrait of himself. Sondheim asked him to inscribe it, and said later of

38843-655: The role on July 1, 2018. Williams is located on a 450-acre (180-hectare) campus in Williamstown, Massachusetts, in the Berkshires in rural northwestern Massachusetts. The campus contains more than 100 academic, athletic, and residential buildings. The early planners of Williams College eschewed the traditional collegiate quadrangle organization, choosing to freely site buildings among the hills. Later construction, including East and West Colleges and Griffin Hall, tended to cluster around Main Street in Williamstown. The first campus quadrangle

39060-555: The same time, Stephen Sondheim found success with some of his musicals, as mentioned above. Williams College Williams College is a private liberal arts college in Williamstown, Massachusetts , United States. It was established as a men's college in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim Williams , a colonist from the Province of Massachusetts Bay who was killed in the French and Indian War in 1755. Williams's main campus

39277-466: The second through fourth floors of the science center. In 2003, Williams began the first of three massive construction projects. The $ 60 million '62 Center for Theatre and Dance was the first project to be successfully completed in the spring of 2005. The $ 44 million student center, called Paresky Center, opened in February 2007. Construction had already begun on the third project, called the Stetson-Sawyer project, when economic uncertainty stemming from

39494-415: The sentimental romance of operetta, adding technical expertise and the fast-paced staging and naturalistic dialogue style led by director George Abbott . The 1940s began with more hits from Porter, Irving Berlin , Rodgers and Hart, Weill and Gershwin, some with runs over 500 performances as the economy rebounded, but artistic change was in the air. Rodgers and Hammerstein 's Oklahoma! (1943) completed

39711-491: The show and its aftermath, Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened , directed by Merrily cast member Lonny Price, and produced by Bruce David Klein , Kitt Lavoie, and Ted Schillinger, premiered at the New York Film Festival on November 18, 2016. A film adaptation of Merrily We Roll Along , directed by Richard Linklater , began production in 2019 and is planned to continue for the next two decades to allow

39928-401: The show did not continue as planned; it opened off-Broadway in 2000. Sondheim later said, "I don't have any emotional reaction to Saturday Night at all—except fondness. It's not bad stuff for a 23-year-old. There are some things that embarrass me so much in the lyrics—the missed accents, the obvious jokes. But I decided, leave it. It's my baby pictures. You don't touch up a baby picture—you're

40145-420: The show's opening number changed the history of musical theatre: "After a verse like that, sung to a buoyant melody, the banalities of the old musical stage became intolerable." It was the first "blockbuster" Broadway show, running a total of 2,212 performances, and was made into a hit film. It remains one of the most frequently produced of the team's projects. William A. Everett and Paul R. Laird wrote that this

40362-407: The show, although it sometimes consists of a series of songs not directly musically related. Spoken dialogue is generally interspersed between musical numbers, although "sung dialogue" or recitative may be used, especially in so-called " sung-through " musicals such as Jesus Christ Superstar , Falsettos , Les Misérables , Evita and Hamilton . Several shorter musicals on Broadway and in

40579-504: The show. Sondheim lived in a Turtle Bay, Manhattan brownstone from his writing of Gypsy in 1959. Ten years later, he heard a knock on the door. His neighbor, Katharine Hepburn , was in "bare feet—this angry, red-faced lady" and told him, "You have been keeping me awake all night!" (she was practicing for her musical debut in Coco ). "I remember asking Hepburn why she didn't just call me, but she claimed not to have my phone number. My guess

40796-476: The stage, most notably Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita . Others had no dialogue or were otherwise reminiscent of opera, with dramatic, emotional themes; these sometimes started as concept albums and were referred to as rock operas . Shows like Raisin , Dreamgirls , Purlie and The Wiz brought a significant African-American influence to Broadway. More varied musical genres and styles were incorporated into musicals both on and especially off-Broadway. At

41013-402: The standard for what was considered a successful show. These shows were designed for family audiences, a marked contrast from the risqué burlesques, bawdy music hall shows and French operettas that sometimes drew a crowd seeking less wholesome entertainment. Only a few 19th-century musical pieces exceeded the run of The Mikado , such as Dorothy , which opened in 1886 and set a new record with

41230-515: The storytelling, particularly by the principal performers as well as the chorus. Third, musicals often use various genres of popular music or at least popular singing and musical styles. Finally, musicals usually avoid certain operatic conventions. In particular, a musical is almost always performed in the language of its audience. Musicals produced on Broadway or in the West End, for instance, are invariably sung in English, even if they were originally written in another language. While an opera singer

41447-552: The student activity tax and are in charge of distributing funds to registered student organizations (RSOs). To manage its endowment , the college started the Williams College Investment Office in 2006. In 2020, the endowment-per-student ratio reached $ 1.40 million unadjusted for inflation , while in 1990, it was $ 151,000. Adjusting for inflation, the endowment-per-student ratio had still increased to almost $ 600,000. In 2021, Williams' endowment-per-student ratio

41664-623: The summer of 1753, they performed ballad-operas, such as The Beggar's Opera , and ballad-farces. By the 1840s, P. T. Barnum was operating an entertainment complex in lower Manhattan. Other early musical theatre in America consisted of British forms, such as burletta and pantomime, but what a piece was called did not necessarily define what it was. The 1852 Broadway extravaganza The Magic Deer advertised itself as "A Serio Comico Tragico Operatical Historical Extravaganzical Burletical Tale of Enchantment." Theatre in New York moved from downtown gradually to midtown from around 1850 and did not arrive in

41881-490: The theater, with his best-known works including A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962), Company (1970), Follies (1971), A Little Night Music (1973), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1979), Merrily We Roll Along (1981), Sunday in the Park with George (1984), and Into the Woods (1987). Sondheim's numerous awards and nominations include eight Tony Awards , an Academy Award , eight Grammy Awards , an Olivier Award , and

42098-674: The traditions of comic opera and used elements of burlesque and of the Harrigan and Hart pieces. He replaced the bawdy women of burlesque with his "respectable" corps of Gaiety Girls to complete the musical and visual fun. The success of the first of these, In Town (1892) and A Gaiety Girl (1893) set the style for the next three decades. The plots were generally light, romantic "poor maiden loves aristocrat and wins him against all odds" shows, with music by Ivan Caryll , Sidney Jones and Lionel Monckton . These shows were immediately widely copied in America, and Edwardian musical comedy swept away

42315-449: The villain in Oklahoma! is a suspected murderer and psychopath; Carousel deals with spousal abuse, thievery, suicide and the afterlife; South Pacific explores miscegenation even more thoroughly than Show Boat ; the hero of The King and I dies onstage; and the backdrop of The Sound of Music is the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938 . The show's creativity stimulated Rodgers and Hammerstein's contemporaries and ushered in

42532-485: The winter study term to study abroad or work on intensive research projects. Williams' most popular undergraduate majors, based on 2021 graduates, were: The college's 2021-22 Comprehensive Fee was $ 76,980, including tuition ($ 61,450) and board, room, and fees ($ 15,530). 48% of students were given need-based financial aid , which averaged $ 63,516. Williams sponsors the Williams–Mystic program at Mystic Seaport ;

42749-464: The work's musical or dramatic content in defining into which art form the piece falls. Sondheim said, "I really think that when something plays Broadway it's a musical, and when it plays in an opera house it's opera. That's it. It's the terrain, the countryside, the expectations of the audience that make it one thing or another." There remains an overlap in form between lighter operatic forms and more musically complex or ambitious musicals. In practice, it

42966-504: The works of Harrigan and Hart in America. These were followed by Edwardian musical comedies , which emerged in Britain, and the musical theatre works of American creators like George M. Cohan at the turn of the 20th century. The Princess Theatre musicals (1915–1918) were artistic steps forward beyond the revues and other frothy entertainments of the early 20th century and led to such groundbreaking works as Show Boat (1927), Of Thee I Sing (1931) and Oklahoma! (1943). Some of

43183-420: Was A Chinese Honeymoon (1901), which ran for a record-setting 1,074 performances in London and 376 in New York. After the turn of the 20th century, Seymour Hicks joined forces with Edwardes and American producer Charles Frohman to create another decade of popular shows. Other enduring Edwardian musical comedy hits included The Arcadians (1909) and The Quaker Girl (1910). Virtually eliminated from

43400-687: Was 1970's Company . A show about a single man and his married friends, Company (with a book by George Furth ) lacked a straightforward plot, instead centering on themes such as marriage and the difficulty of making an emotional connection with another person. It opened on April 26, 1970, at the Alvin Theatre , running for 705 performances after seven previews, and won Tony Awards for Best Musical , Best Music, and Best Lyrics. The original cast included Dean Jones , Elaine Stritch , and Charles Kimbrough . Popular songs include " Company ", "The Little Things You Do Together", "Sorry-Grateful", "You Could Drive

43617-433: Was Robert Barrow: everybody hated him because he was very dry, and I thought he was wonderful because he was very dry. And Barrow made me realize that all my romantic views of art were nonsense. I had always thought an angel came down and sat on your shoulder and whispered in your ear "dah-dah-dah-DUM." It never occurred to me that art was something worked out. And suddenly it was skies opening up. As soon as you find out what

43834-420: Was a "show, that, like Show Boat , became a milestone, so that later historians writing about important moments in twentieth-century theatre would begin to identify eras according to their relationship to Oklahoma! ". "After Oklahoma! , Rodgers and Hammerstein were the most important contributors to the musical-play form... The examples they set in creating vital plays, often rich with social thought, provided

44051-429: Was also credited as a co-writer of the lyrics, but he later offered Sondheim solo credit, as Sondheim had essentially done all of them. The New York Times review of the show did not mention the lyrics. Sondheim described the division of the royalties, saying that Bernstein received 3% and he received 1%. Bernstein suggested evening the percentage at 2% each, but Sondheim refused because he was satisfied with just getting

44268-609: Was an officer in the Massachusetts militia and a member of a prominent landowning family. Williams was killed at the Battle of Lake George on September 8, 1755. His will included a bequest to support and maintain a free school to be established in the town of West Hoosac, Massachusetts, provided the town change its name to Williamstown. Members of the Williams family first attempted to found Queens College in Hatfield, Massachusetts , in 1762, but

44485-465: Was canceled due to "difficulties encountered by the commercial producers attached to the project ... in raising the necessary funds". Later revised as Sondheim on Sondheim , the revue was produced at Studio 54 by the Roundabout Theatre Company ; previews began on March 19, 2010, and ran from April 22 to June 13. The revue's cast included Barbara Cook , Vanessa L. Williams , Tom Wopat , Norm Lewis , and Leslie Kritzer . In 2013, Lapine directed

44702-468: Was dominated by musical theatre standards, such as " Fascinating Rhythm ", " Tea for Two " and " Someone to Watch Over Me ". Many shows were revues , series of sketches and songs with little or no connection between them. The best-known of these were the annual Ziegfeld Follies , spectacular song-and-dance revues on Broadway featuring extravagant sets, elaborate costumes and beautiful chorus girls. These spectacles also raised production values, and mounting

44919-423: Was elected a professor in 1829. The board of trustees of Williams College has 25 members and is the governing authority of the college. The president of the college serves on the board ex officio . There are five alumni trustees, each of whom serves for a five-year term. There are five term trustees, each elected by the board for five-year terms. The remaining 14 members are regular trustees, also elected by

45136-451: Was formed with East College, South College, and the Hopkins Observatory. The Olmsted Brothers design firm played a large part in shaping the campus design and architecture. In 1902, the firm was commissioned to renovate a large part of campus, including the President's House, the cemetery, and South College; as well as incorporating the George A. Cluett estate into the campus acreage. Although these campus renovations were completed in 1912,

45353-483: Was fresher. Tolerance as an important theme in musicals has continued in recent decades. The final expression of West Side Story left a message of racial tolerance. By the end of the 1960s, musicals became racially integrated, with black and white cast members even covering each other's roles, as they did in Hair . Homosexuality has also been explored in musicals, starting with Hair , and even more overtly in La Cage aux Folles , Falsettos , Rent , Hedwig and

45570-439: Was good and every fifth movie was great. There wasn't any cultural pressure to make art". At age 22, Sondheim had finished the four shows Hammerstein requested. Screenwriters Julius and Philip Epstein 's Front Porch in Flatbush , unproduced at the time, was being shopped around by designer and producer Lemuel Ayers . Ayers approached Frank Loesser and another composer; both turned him down. Ayers and Sondheim met as ushers at

45787-428: Was made in 2007 directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp , Helena Bonham Carter , and Alan Rickman . Merrily We Roll Along (1981), with a book by George Furth , is one of Sondheim's most traditional scores; songs from the musical were recorded by Frank Sinatra and Carly Simon . According to Sondheim's music director Paul Gemignani , "Part of Steve's ability is this extraordinary versatility". The show

46004-413: Was not the success their previous collaborations had been: after a chaotic series of preview performances, it opened to widely negative reviews, and closed after a run of less than two weeks. Due to the high quality of Sondheim's score, the show has been repeatedly revised and produced in the ensuing years. Martin Gottfried wrote, "Sondheim had set out to write traditional songs ... But [despite] that there

46221-399: Was one of nine colleges or universities to exceed $ 2 million along with Princeton , Yale, MIT , Stanford , Harvard, Amherst, Pomona , and Swarthmore . The Office of the President is located in Hopkins Hall, named after Mark Hopkins , Williams's fourth president, and the president of the college lives in the Samuel Sloan House, erected in 1801. Before moving into the Samuel Sloan House,

46438-452: Was praised by critics for its innovations in music and choreography but was less commercially successful than the same year's The Music Man , written and composed by Meredith Willson , which won the Tony Award for Best Musical that year. West Side Story would get a film adaptation in 1961, which proved successful both critically and commercially. Laurents and Sondheim teamed up again for Gypsy (1959), with Jule Styne providing

46655-428: Was revived on Broadway in 2001 and 2011. A Little Night Music (1973), based on Ingmar Bergman 's Smiles of a Summer Night and with a score primarily in waltz time , was among Sondheim's greatest commercial successes. Time magazine called it his "most brilliant accomplishment to date". The original cast included Glynis Johns , Len Cariou , Hermione Gingold , and Judy Kahan . The show opened on Broadway at

46872-425: Was the French operetta The Chimes of Normandy in 1878 (705 performances). English comic opera adopted many of the successful ideas of European operetta, none more successfully than the series of more than a dozen long-running Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas, including H.M.S. Pinafore (1878) and The Mikado (1885). These were sensations on both sides of the Atlantic and in Australia and helped to raise

47089-692: Was treat me like dirt, but come on to me at the same time." She once wrote him a letter saying that the only regret she ever had was giving birth to him. When she died in 1992, Sondheim did not attend her funeral. He had been estranged from her for nearly 20 years. When Sondheim was about ten years old (around the time of his parents' divorce), he formed a close friendship with James Hammerstein , son of lyricist and playwright Oscar Hammerstein II , who were neighbors in Bucks County. The elder Hammerstein became Sondheim's surrogate father, influencing him profoundly and developing his love of musical theater. Sondheim met Hal Prince , who later directed many of his shows, at

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