Rodgers & Hammerstein's Carousel: The Complete Book and Lyrics of the Broadway Musical (Applause Libretto Library) - Softcover

Richard Rodgers

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1495056589 ISBN 13: 9781495056581

Publisher: Applause, 2016

Synopsis

In a Maine coastal village toward the end of the 19th century, swaggering, carefree carnival barker Billy Bigelow captivates and marries naive millworker Julie Jordan. Billy loses his job just as he learns that Julie is pregnant, and desperately intent upon providing a decent life for his family he is coerced into being an accomplice to a robbery. Caught in the act and facing the certainty of prison, he takes his own life and is sent up there. Billy is allowed to return to earth for one day 15 years later, and he encounters the daughter he never knew. She is a lonely, friendless teenager, her father s reputation as a thief and bully having haunted her throughout her young life. How Billy instils a sense of hope and dignity in both the child and her mother is a dramatic testimony to the power of love. It s easy to understand why, of all the shows they created, Carousel was Rodgers and Hammerstein s personal favourite.

About this title

About the Author

Richard Rodgers (composer 1902-1979) and Oscar Hammerstein II (librettist/lyricist, 1895-1960) joined forces in 1943 to create the most successful partnership in American musical theater. Their first musical, Oklahoma!, was also the first of a new genre, the musical play, blending Rodgers' sophisticated style of musical comedy with Hammerstein's innovations in opera. Oklahoma! was followed by Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, and The Sound of Music, among others. Collectively the Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals earned thirty-four Tony Awards, fifteen Academy Awards, two Pulitzer Prizes, two Grammy Awards, and an Emmy Award.

Edition details

• Publisher: Applause
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1495056589
• ISBN 13: 9781495056581
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 182