the.com/musical
The genre where feelings get too big for talking, so people sing instead.
means A play or film in which songs and dance numbers are woven into the story to carry plot and emotion.
from From 'music,' which traces back through Old French 'musique' to Latin 'musica' and Greek 'mousike' — 'art of the Muses,' the nine goddesses of poetry, song, and dance. 'Musical' as a noun for a stage show built around songs emerged in the early 1900s, shorthand for 'musical comedy,' the Broadway and West End hybrid of spoken scenes and musical numbers that eventually just got called by the adjective alone.
- plot device
- emotional overflow triggers spontaneous singing
- origin
- evolved from opera minus the guilt of pretension
- golden age
- 1940s-60s Broadway defined the modern template
- sneaky trick
- reprises make you cry on purpose, twice