PARADE Diverges Buchkatalog

In the 1990s, a sudden outpouring of new musical talent flooded New York. Dubbed at the time as creating New Theater Music, these challenging composers were drawn to provocative and less outwardly joyful material and possessed affinities for atonal chords and complex harmonies, placing them more in the company of Sondheim than of Schwartz. When PARADE premiered on Broadway in 1998, its composer-lyricist, Jason Robert Brown, was listed among this group of impressive up-and-comers. PARADE, a musicalization of the notorious case of Leo Frank, a Jew tragically accused of the murder of a young girl in the turn-of-the twentieth-century American South, is an amalgamation of traditional and newer techniques and topics ripe for historical and artistic analysis. Closely examining the strikingly different Broadway and London premieres, this book demonstrates how the fascinatingly complex musical engages and distances audiences, how critical receptions alter over years and miles, and how directorial vision and critical reviews affect the continuing trajectory of the American musical.