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Robert Edwin(EDITOR)
robert edwin
Some six years after the rock musical Rent opened on Broadway, its "birth parent" La Bohème followed it to the Great White Way. With the December 2002 opening of Baz Luhrmann's 1957 period realization of Puccini's classic opera, Broadway, like our universe, continues to expand. This author finds it amusing that, after eighteen years of encouraging NATS members to explore the non-classical vocal techniques, styles, and repertoire that traditionally constitute the Broadway musical, Broadway now invites classically trained opera singers to "come as you are" to an audition for at least one show. Therefore, for all who, by default, are now teachers of Broadway-style singing as well as for those who have been teaching it for a while, a review of the musicals and vocal styles currently on Broadway may be helpful.
As of this writing, twenty-one musicals occupy Broadway houses. By the time this is published, however, at least two of the shows (Into the Woods and Les Miserables) will not be current. For the sake of all the employed singers, actors, dancers, and musicians, as well as for the readers, I hope the following list is still reasonably valid.
Of the aforementioned twenty-one musicals, seven have graced Broadway stages before. The revivals are 42nd Street , Cabaret, Chicago, Flower Drum Song, Into the Woods, Man of La Mancha, and Oklahoma! Broadway's fourteen "new" musicals are Aida, Beauty and the Beast, Dance of the Vampires, Hairspray, La Bohème, Les Miserables, The Lion King, Mamma Mia, Movin' Out, The Phantom of the Opera, The Producers, Rent, Thoroughly Modern Millie, and Urinetown The Musical .
Broadway, therefore, in the 2002-2003 season can claim vocal styles that span from classical to rock, with La Bohème and Rent serving, appropriately, as musical bookends. We can put all the musicals into four basic vocal categories: traditional legit, contemporary legit, traditional belt, and contemporary belt.
Legit is Broadway shorthand for "legitimate," which refers to singing in a classical-like style. Among other things, the vocal tone will have chiaroscuro fullness, the vowels and consonants will have clarity...