The Black Crook
Encyclopedia
The Black Crook is considered to be the first piece of musical theatre
that conforms to the modern notion of a "book musical". The book is by Charles M. Barras (1826-1873), an American playwright. The music is mostly adaptations, but some new songs were composed for the play, notably "March of the Amazons" by Giuseppe Operti, and "You Naughty, Naughty Men", with music by George Bickwell and lyrics by Theodore Kennick.
It opened on September 12, 1866 at the 3,200-seat Niblo's Garden
on Broadway
, New York City and ran for a record-breaking 474 performances. It was then toured extensively for decades and revived on Broadway in 1870-71, 1871-72 and many more times after that. It was originally produced by the theatre's manager, William Wheatley
, who also directed the piece. The cast also included Annie Kemp Bowler, Charles Morton, Marie Bonfanti
, J.W. Blaisdell, E.B. Holmes, Millie Cavendish and George Boniface.
This production gave America claim to having originated the musical
. The Black Crook is considered a prototype of the modern musical in that its popular songs and dances are interspersed throughout a unifying play and performed by the actors.
The British production of The Black Crook, which opened at the Alhambra Theatre
on December 23, 1872, was an opera bouffe
version based on the same French source material, with new music by Frederic Clay
and Georges Jacobi. The author, Harry Paulton, starred as Dandelion, opposite the comedienne Kate Santley
, who had appeared in the 1871-72 Broadway revival.
The Black Crook was also produced in 1882 in Birmingham, Alabama
as the opening-night attraction at O'Brien's Opera House.
A silent film version of The Black Crook was produced in 1916. It is the only screen version of the show.
by combining their ballet forces with Barras's melodrama.
In operas, even comic operas with dialogue like The Magic Flute
, the principal singers leave the dancing to the ballet troupe. In burlesque
, music hall
and vaudeville
, there is little or no unifying story, just a series of sketches. So The Black Crook, with song and dance for everyone, was an evolutionary step, and has been called the first musical comedy. Cecil Michener Smith dissented from this view, arguing that while multiple scholars point to the show as the first popular comedy, "calling The Black Crook the first example of the theatrical genus we now call musical comedy is not only incorrect; it fails to suggest any useful assessment of the place of Jarrett and Palmer's extravaganza in the history of the popular musical theatre ... but in its first form it contained almost none of the vernacular attributes of book, lyrics, music, and dancing which distinguish musical comedy."
The production was a staggering five-and-a-half hours long, but despite its length, it ran for a record-breaking 474 performances and revenues exceeded a record-shattering one million dollars. The same year, The Black Domino/Between You, Me and the Post was the first show to call itself a "musical comedy." In the late 1860s, as post-Civil War business boomed, there was a sharp increase in the number of working and middle class people in New York, and these more affluent people sought entertainment. Theaters became more popular, and Niblo's Garden, which had formerly hosted opera, began to offer light comedy. The Black Crook was followed by The White Fawn (1868), Le Barbe Blue (1868) and Evangeline (1873).
The production included state-of-the-art special effects, including a "transformation scene" that converted a rocky grotto into a fairyland throne room in full view of the audience. A scantily-clad female dancing chorus of 100 ballerinas in skin-colored tights, choreographed in semi-classical style by David Costa, was a big draw. It was respectable enough for the middle-class audience, but very daring and controversial enough to attract a great deal of press attention. The show's prima ballerina, Marie Bonfanti
, became a star in New York.
An apparently similar show from six years earlier, The Seven Sisters (1860), which also ran for a very long run of 253 performances, is now lost and forgotten. It also included special effects and scene changes. Theatre historian John Kenrick
suggests that The Black Crook's greater success resulted from changes brought about by the Civil War: First, respectable women, having had to work during the war, no longer felt tied to their homes and could attend the theatre, although many did so heavily veiled. This substantially increased the potential audience for popular entertainment. Second, America's railroad system had improved during the war, making it feasible for large productions to tour.
, and other well-known works.
Evil, wealthy Count Wolfenstein seeks to marry the lovely village girl, Amina. With the help of Amina's scheming foster mother Barbara, the Count arranges for Amina's fiancé, Rodolphe, an impoverished artist, to fall into the hands of Hertzog, an ancient, crook-backed master of black magic. Hertzog has made a pact with the Devil (Zamiel, "The Arch Fiend"): he can live forever if he provides Zamiel with a fresh soul every New Year's Eve. As Rodolphe is led to this horrible fate, he escapes, discovers a buried treasure, and saves a dove. The dove magically turns out to be Stalacta, Fairy Queen of the Golden Realm, who is pretending to be a bird. The grateful Queen rescues Rodolphe by bringing him to fairyland and then reuniting him with his beloved Amina. The Count is defeated, demons drag the evil Hertzog into hell, and Rodolphe and Amina live happily ever after.
Act II
New York Public Library
Additional sites
Musical theatre
Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...
that conforms to the modern notion of a "book musical". The book is by Charles M. Barras (1826-1873), an American playwright. The music is mostly adaptations, but some new songs were composed for the play, notably "March of the Amazons" by Giuseppe Operti, and "You Naughty, Naughty Men", with music by George Bickwell and lyrics by Theodore Kennick.
It opened on September 12, 1866 at the 3,200-seat Niblo's Garden
Niblo's Garden
Niblo's Garden was a New York theatre on Broadway, near Prince Street. It was established in 1823 as "Columbia Garden" which in 1828 gained the name of the Sans Souci and was later the property of the coffeehouse proprietor and caterer William Niblo. The large theatre that evolved in several...
on Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
, New York City and ran for a record-breaking 474 performances. It was then toured extensively for decades and revived on Broadway in 1870-71, 1871-72 and many more times after that. It was originally produced by the theatre's manager, William Wheatley
William Wheatley
William Wheatley was an American stage actor.-Biography:He was born in New York City, the son of Frederick Wheatley, once a favorite actor in Baltimore and Philadelphia. His mother was Sarah Wheatley, who died in 1873. She was an admirable and a justly renowned actress...
, who also directed the piece. The cast also included Annie Kemp Bowler, Charles Morton, Marie Bonfanti
Marie Bonfanti
Marie Bonfanti was a 19th century ballet dancer whose New York City première came at Niblo's Garden on Monday, September 10th, 1866. She then was the prima ballerina in The Black Crook at the same theatre, which premièred two days later. She appeared in Sylvia by Léo Delibes at the Metropolitan...
, J.W. Blaisdell, E.B. Holmes, Millie Cavendish and George Boniface.
This production gave America claim to having originated the musical
Musical theatre
Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...
. The Black Crook is considered a prototype of the modern musical in that its popular songs and dances are interspersed throughout a unifying play and performed by the actors.
The British production of The Black Crook, which opened at the Alhambra Theatre
Alhambra Theatre
The Alhambra was a popular theatre and music hall located on the east side of Leicester Square, in the West End of London. It was built originally as The Royal Panopticon of Science and Arts opening on 18 March 1854. It was closed after two years and reopened as the Alhambra. The building was...
on December 23, 1872, was an opera bouffe
Opéra bouffe
Opéra bouffe is a genre of late 19th-century French operetta, closely associated with Jacques Offenbach, who produced many of them at the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens that gave its name to the form....
version based on the same French source material, with new music by Frederic Clay
Frederic Clay
Frederic Emes Clay was an English composer known principally for his music written for the stage. Clay, a great friend of Arthur Sullivan's, wrote four comic operas with W. S...
and Georges Jacobi. The author, Harry Paulton, starred as Dandelion, opposite the comedienne Kate Santley
Kate Santley
Kate Santley was an American-born English actress, singer, comedienne, and theatre manager. Her brother was the English baritone, Sir Charles Santley, famous in Wagner's Flying Dutchman among other roles.-Musical theatre career:...
, who had appeared in the 1871-72 Broadway revival.
The Black Crook was also produced in 1882 in Birmingham, Alabama
Birmingham, Alabama
Birmingham is the largest city in Alabama. The city is the county seat of Jefferson County. According to the 2010 United States Census, Birmingham had a population of 212,237. The Birmingham-Hoover Metropolitan Area, in estimate by the U.S...
as the opening-night attraction at O'Brien's Opera House.
A silent film version of The Black Crook was produced in 1916. It is the only screen version of the show.
Background
The Black Crook was born when a dramatic group and Parisian ballet troupe joined forces in New York. Henry C. Jarrett and Harry Palmer had hired the ballet troupe to perform at the New York Academy of Music, but the troupe was left without an engagement when a fire destroyed the Academy. They approached Wheatley at Niblo's Garden to see if he could use them. Wheatley offered them a chance to participate in a musical "spectacle"Extravaganza
An extravaganza is a literary or musical work characterized by freedom of style and structure and usually containing elements of burlesque, pantomime, music hall and parody. It sometimes also has elements of cabaret, circus, revue, variety, vaudeville and mime...
by combining their ballet forces with Barras's melodrama.
In operas, even comic operas with dialogue like The Magic Flute
The Magic Flute
The Magic Flute is an opera in two acts composed in 1791 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to a German libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. The work is in the form of a Singspiel, a popular form that included both singing and spoken dialogue....
, the principal singers leave the dancing to the ballet troupe. In burlesque
Burlesque
Burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects...
, music hall
Music hall
Music Hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment which was popular between 1850 and 1960. The term can refer to:# A particular form of variety entertainment involving a mixture of popular song, comedy and speciality acts...
and vaudeville
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
, there is little or no unifying story, just a series of sketches. So The Black Crook, with song and dance for everyone, was an evolutionary step, and has been called the first musical comedy. Cecil Michener Smith dissented from this view, arguing that while multiple scholars point to the show as the first popular comedy, "calling The Black Crook the first example of the theatrical genus we now call musical comedy is not only incorrect; it fails to suggest any useful assessment of the place of Jarrett and Palmer's extravaganza in the history of the popular musical theatre ... but in its first form it contained almost none of the vernacular attributes of book, lyrics, music, and dancing which distinguish musical comedy."
The production was a staggering five-and-a-half hours long, but despite its length, it ran for a record-breaking 474 performances and revenues exceeded a record-shattering one million dollars. The same year, The Black Domino/Between You, Me and the Post was the first show to call itself a "musical comedy." In the late 1860s, as post-Civil War business boomed, there was a sharp increase in the number of working and middle class people in New York, and these more affluent people sought entertainment. Theaters became more popular, and Niblo's Garden, which had formerly hosted opera, began to offer light comedy. The Black Crook was followed by The White Fawn (1868), Le Barbe Blue (1868) and Evangeline (1873).
The production included state-of-the-art special effects, including a "transformation scene" that converted a rocky grotto into a fairyland throne room in full view of the audience. A scantily-clad female dancing chorus of 100 ballerinas in skin-colored tights, choreographed in semi-classical style by David Costa, was a big draw. It was respectable enough for the middle-class audience, but very daring and controversial enough to attract a great deal of press attention. The show's prima ballerina, Marie Bonfanti
Marie Bonfanti
Marie Bonfanti was a 19th century ballet dancer whose New York City première came at Niblo's Garden on Monday, September 10th, 1866. She then was the prima ballerina in The Black Crook at the same theatre, which premièred two days later. She appeared in Sylvia by Léo Delibes at the Metropolitan...
, became a star in New York.
An apparently similar show from six years earlier, The Seven Sisters (1860), which also ran for a very long run of 253 performances, is now lost and forgotten. It also included special effects and scene changes. Theatre historian John Kenrick
John Kenrick (theatre writer)
John Kenrick is an American author, teacher and theatre and film historian. Kenrick is an adjunct teacher of musical theatre history at New York University, Brind School – University of the Arts and The New School, and lectures frequently on the subject elsewhere...
suggests that The Black Crook's greater success resulted from changes brought about by the Civil War: First, respectable women, having had to work during the war, no longer felt tied to their homes and could attend the theatre, although many did so heavily veiled. This substantially increased the potential audience for popular entertainment. Second, America's railroad system had improved during the war, making it feasible for large productions to tour.
Synopsis
The musical is set in 1600 in the Harz Mountains of Germany. It incorporates elements from Goethe's Faust, Weber's Der FreischützDer Freischütz
Der Freischütz is an opera in three acts by Carl Maria von Weber with a libretto by Friedrich Kind. It premiered on 18 June 1821 at the Schauspielhaus Berlin...
, and other well-known works.
Evil, wealthy Count Wolfenstein seeks to marry the lovely village girl, Amina. With the help of Amina's scheming foster mother Barbara, the Count arranges for Amina's fiancé, Rodolphe, an impoverished artist, to fall into the hands of Hertzog, an ancient, crook-backed master of black magic. Hertzog has made a pact with the Devil (Zamiel, "The Arch Fiend"): he can live forever if he provides Zamiel with a fresh soul every New Year's Eve. As Rodolphe is led to this horrible fate, he escapes, discovers a buried treasure, and saves a dove. The dove magically turns out to be Stalacta, Fairy Queen of the Golden Realm, who is pretending to be a bird. The grateful Queen rescues Rodolphe by bringing him to fairyland and then reuniting him with his beloved Amina. The Count is defeated, demons drag the evil Hertzog into hell, and Rodolphe and Amina live happily ever after.
Musical numbers
Act I- Early in the Morning ..... Carline
- You Naughty, Naughty Men .... Carline
- March of the Amazons .... Chorus
Act II
- Dare I Tell
- Flow On, Silver Stream ....... Stalacta
- (The) Power of Love ....... Stalacta
External links
New York Public Library
- Photos of The Black Crook from the Billy Rose Theatre Collection
- The Black Crook, from the Library for the Performing ArtsNew York Public Library for the Performing ArtsThe New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center houses one of the world's largest collections of materials relating to the performing arts. It is one of the four research centers of the New York Public Library's Research library system, and it is also one...
"Musical of the Month" series - Audio files to several songs from The Black Crook, from the Library for the Performing ArtsNew York Public Library for the Performing ArtsThe New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center houses one of the world's largest collections of materials relating to the performing arts. It is one of the four research centers of the New York Public Library's Research library system, and it is also one...
"Musical of the Month" series - The Music of The Black Crook (Sheet Music) from the Library for the Performing ArtsNew York Public Library for the Performing ArtsThe New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center houses one of the world's largest collections of materials relating to the performing arts. It is one of the four research centers of the New York Public Library's Research library system, and it is also one...
"Musical of the Month" series
Additional sites