Italy and a Musical rebirth
Many of you might know that in the 15th century Italy gave birth to the “reneaisance movement”.Great landlords like De Medici, Pope’s and Kings shaked the world by commissioning Michelengelo, Raffaello, Leonardo and many others great forms of arts.one of these forms was Music.
For sure in the last 5 centuries music has evolved, but it has always had a certain link to theatres.In the last century theatres and music had a certain change in the way they where received thanks to Musicals, these wanted to unite dramatic opera’s to easier and lighter plots with less complex music.Great one’s like Andrew Llyod Webber and Cameron Mckintosh gave us classics like Phantom, Cats, Les Miserable as well as many others.
Any Disney fan would certainly say that Disney came into the game in an important way in the 1990′s, pulling out of their hat a few hits, and a few flops, but the few hits where really REALLY BIG hits!Lion King and Beauty and the Beast immediately come to mind!And With these Alan Menken, Disney legend and great composer, is at the center of it all.
He and his late partner, Howard Ashman, gave in the late 80′s and 90′s a deffinite boost to the Disney renaisiance buy uniting Disney cartoons with Broodway style music up on screen; and then Alan helped it further by bringing his creations on stage.
Well closing the circle a few theatres in Milan in Italy decided to reposition the city as a Boradway/West End/Hamburg type of venue and to do it they shopped around and searched for the best musicals to favoruably reposition the City as a Musical Venue.And their Disney was called to help bring an italian version of Beauty and the Beast on stage.
Reading the Italian newspaper online one can find a small but interesting interview with Sir Menken.The Italian audience is not that familiar with Brodway style Musicals so Alan tries to set the stage stating that, as much as TV, Movies and all are culturaly relevant to musicals and therefore mainstream the genre, people don’t have to come to theatres expecting a light comedy entertainment.
Rather his vision of musicals is of motivating the people to look further in depth in charatcers and plots, and musicals numbers have got to be a means to an end to help a charcter be perceved and known better.Italians have a history with Disney, 75% of worldwide comics are published from Milan and this makes the Italians a more “comic” than “themepark and movie” audience.This certianly will make people think that the stage version of BEauty and the beast opening october 3rd in Milan might be a light hearted take on the movie.Not so; Alan clearly states that the Beast opening in Milan is as mucha beauty as the one reknown worldwide.
Musical fans should take note that Menken states that he was offered to write the Hairspray musical but gave it up since he felt it was to similar to Little shop of horrors, and that it was Chorus line which inspired him for the first time to get into this field.Strange enogth though Alan clearly states that the recession is heavily hitting musicals as less shows are opening and more and more are closing as theatre goers have diminished.Closing with a happy note Alan Menken says that their is a lot of Disney still in his future; he is writing the music for two new movies; Rapunzel and Snow Queen.
This, I might add, needs to be taken with a grain of salt; Italian journalists are known for writing stuff in fields they don’t really know without researching that much ; it might very well be that the interview is very old (no date is stated) and that Snow Queen was the (now cancelled) Tokyo project.
