West End Musical
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The West End musical is the British counterpart to Broadway, centered on London's Theatreland, and it gave the world the sung-through megamusical and its distinctive blend of pop-classical scoring and grand spectacle. Musically it favors soaring through-composed melody, lush synth-and-orchestra textures, and star soprano and tenor voices trained to fill vast auditoriums. Andrew Lloyd Webber's leitmotivic pop-opera and the Boublil-Schönberg epic style define its signature sound, though the tradition runs from Edwardian musical comedy to modern British pop musicals. The mood is romantic, emotive, and cinematic, built for the spectacle house.
History
London's musical stage ran from Gaiety Theatre Edwardian musical comedies of the 1890s through the mid-century imports of American hits, but the West End found a world-conquering voice in the late 1970s and 1980s. Andrew Lloyd Webber (Evita, 1978; Cats, 1981; The Phantom of the Opera, 1986) and Cameron Mackintosh's productions of Les Misérables (London, 1985) and Miss Saigon exported the sung-through megamusical globally, minting stars like Elaine Paige, Michael Ball, and Sarah Brightman. British pop musicals and long-running spectacles followed; governed by the Olivier Awards, the West End remains, with Broadway, one of the two poles of the commercial musical world.
Defining artists
Essential listening
- I Dreamed a Dream(1985) — Patti LuPoneSpotifyYouTube
- Memory(1981) — Elaine PaigeSpotifyYouTube
- Don't Cry for Me Argentina(1978) — Elaine PaigeSpotifyYouTube
- All I Ask of You(1986) — Sarah BrightmanSpotifyYouTube
- Any Dream Will Do(1991) — Jason DonovanSpotifyYouTube
- Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again(1986) — Sarah BrightmanSpotifyYouTube
Sources
- Michael Coveney, The Andrew Lloyd Webber Story
- Sheridan Morley, Spread a Little Happiness: The First Hundred Years of the British Musical
- Olivier Awards and West End production records