ABSTRACT
There are many forms of music theatre to be seen in Europe today. They range from plays with music to music dramas, musical comedies, chamber operas, comic operas, chancel operas, operas bagatelle and even children's musicals. Since the early 1980s, large-scale pop and rock concerts and related genres have also become increasingly theatrical. Given such variety, one would imagine that precise definitions would abound. The fact is, in European and North American theatre – and in other cultures influenced by those theatres – the terms ‘music theatre’ and ‘musical theatre’ (including their German, French, Italian and Spanish equivalents) have a wide variety of meanings and usages. No precise terminology defining the genre has, in fact, emerged. We can note, though, that in central Europe since the middle of the twentieth century, the term ‘music theatre’ has grown in use and generally refers to works growing out of the European tradition of opera and operetta in which music is used to interpret and emphasize the dramatic action.
