In the second half of the 20th century, musicals began to be filmed, attracting millions of viewers at premieres. Some songs from musicals then “go to the people” and are covered in various concert programs.
The luminary of this genre can be considered the Englishman Andrew Lloyd Webber, who has scored music for more than 30 musicals, some of which occupy the first lines of the list of the highest grossing musicals of all time (“Phantom at the Opera”, “Cats”, “Evita”, etc. )! It even has its own theatres in the West End and on Broadway. And the most successful producer in this genre is considered to be another Englishman, Cameron Mackintosh, who has participated in the creation of such famous musicals as “The Phantom in the Opera”, “Les Miserables”, “Cats”, “Hamilton”, etc.
I would especially like to mention French musicals, the revolutionary role in the creation of which was played by the French-Canadian musical Notre Dame de Paris, staged by composer Riccardo Cocciante and librettist Luc Plamondon in 1998 (preparations for the premiere took 5 years), as well as “Romeo and Juliet”, the music and libretto for which was written by Gerard Presgurvic.
You can write a lot about the genre of musicals and about the difficult history of their creation, but we will focus your attention on those musicals that we will be able to premiere in Latvia.
Unfortunately, some of the world's musicals have sets of such sizes that they cannot fit on any theatre stage both in Latvia and other Baltic countries, therefore, in order to bring original sets, you will have to build special expensive stages in open space, but the fundamental factor This will be achieved by the desire of a large number of spectators to attend a performance of such a musical in order to enjoy what they saw and remember it for a long time. First, we will try to bring to Riga those musicals that can be placed in existing indoor venues, and then, as audience interest grows, we will consider the Great Stage in Mezaparks.