Handout (flat)        Handout (folded)                Return to Index

publish

 
9. Immigrant Broadway. West Side Story (1956) is surely the iconic depiction of immigrant culture on the Broadway Stage. And it was largely created by people who, like Leonard Bernstein and Jerome Robbins, had been born in this country to immigrant parents. A decade before, in 1946, immigrant composer Kurt Weill had attempted something similar with Street Scene, though shaping it as an opera. A decade before that, second-generation immigrant George Gershwin had depicted another working-class community in another opera, Porgy and Bess (1935), though his subjects were African-Americans rather than recent arrivals from Europe. And a decade before that, in Show Boat (1926), Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein depicted yet another group of Black dock-workers as an ingredient in a show that, for all its theatrical glitter, portrayed serious aspects of American life.

For most of the century, the Broadway musical theater has been dominated by people who were either born in Europe, or had parents who were. Indeed, the American musical grew out of European operetta, such as The Merry Widow (1905) by Franz Lehár, and many of the composers who wrote similar works in America—such as Victor Herbert, Rudolf Friml, and Sigmund Romberg—had experienced this kind of music as part of their European childhoods.

It also makes a difference when such talented immigrants came to this country. Israel Beilin was a child of five in 1893 when his parents fled from Russia, but as Irving Berlin he became one of the quintessential American songwriters, both a keen observer and an ardent patriot. On the other hand, Kurt Weill began his career representing the rootless chaos of Weimar Germany, and there is a strong case to suggest that he remained essentially rootless all his life. rb.

 
The script, videos, and images will be posted immediately after class.