From the Parisian operettas of Jacques Offenbach in the 1850s to such current blockbuster musicals as Les Miserables and Rent, musical theatre has given joy to audiences throughout the world. This lively book--an illustrated history of popular musical theatre--provides a compendium of fascinating details about the origins and development of the genre over a century and a half.
Andrew Lamb moves from country to country, showing how different cultures interpreted and were influenced by different types of musical theatre. He examines, for example, the development of the...