Author Topic: Seventy-Five Years Ago, the Television Musical Made Its Debut  (Read 915 times)

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Seventy-Five Years Ago, the Television Musical Made Its Debut
« on: January 28, 2019, 06:22:27 pm »
Seventy-Five Years Ago, the Television Musical Made Its Debut
 
By Jackie Mansky
 
January 25, 2019
 

The 21st-century iteration of the television musical is a relatively well-oiled machine—as far as live TV allows for such a thing.

NBC gets credit for pioneering this genre of appointment viewing with its production of “The Sound of Music Live!” back in 2013. A costly gamble—the network spent a cool $9 million on the production and Alpine countryside set—the novelty programming proved to be a ratings bonanza, encouraging a steady stream of increasingly sophisticated live “events.”

Each promises stunt casting, spectacle and, if you’re lucky, the magic in the bottle that comes from watching an unforgettable performance unfurl before your eyes. At the very least, it gives you something to tweet about (looking at you, Christopher Walken in “Peter Pan Live!”). This weekend, FOX brings audiences the latest version of the live television musical phenomenon with an adaptation of Jonathan Larson’s wildly popular Rent, starring Vanessa Hudgens and Broadway’s Brandon Victor Dixon.

Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/television-musical-actually-debuted-75-years-ago-180971342/#0MuD7AWFHMWDm03B.99