With its origins in popular operetta, the musical is a distinctly American art form. Despite recent imports from Britain's Andrew Lloyd Webber and France's Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg , New York's Broadway remains the place where musicals are made.
In modern terms, the first musical was Show Boat, which opened at Broadway's Ziegfeld Theater at the end of 1927. With music by the already established Jerome Kern and lyrics by the relative...