ABSTRACT
In the beginning of nineteenth century, America was changing as well, and its tastes in stage entertainment shifted to embrace new genres. Some of the most popular works, such as melodrama, extravaganza, and burlesque, were constructed around a connected storyline, while variety—later called vaudeville—was similar to the minstrel show in that it consisted of various, unconnected skits. Arguably, pantomimed melodramas continued to be presented into the twentieth century: they had been transformed into the new guise of silent movies. In the middle of the nineteenth century, another genre— known variously as extravaganza or spectacle— began to make a splash in the United States. A production that featured elements of several of these spectacle types was The Black Crook, an extravaganza that made its debut at Niblo's Garden in New York City in 1866, after the end of the Civil War. The Black Crook enjoyed numerous revivals throughout the remainder of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and even on to the present day.
