Greatest Songs Of The American Yiddish Theater Vol. 3

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Cat No: 8559455

Release Date: 02 January 2007

Label: Naxos / Naxos Classics

Packaging Type: Jewel Case

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 636943945520

Genres: Classical

Composer/Series: Greatest Songs of the American Yiddish Theater Vol. 3

Description
GREAT SONGS OF THE YIDDISH STAGE, VOL. 3 About American Yiddish Theatrical Songs The selections here derive from the medium of popular Yiddish theatrical song that, beginning in the 1880s, flourished for more than six decades as mass-oriented entertainment among large segments of eastern European Yiddish-speaking immigrant generations and their immediate American-born offspring. Although this aggregate medium came to embrace Yiddish film and radio as well as Jewish recordings, all of which generated on their own a large repertoire of popular Yiddish songs originally independent of live stage productions, nearly all the songs considered here have their genesis in live formats of two principal types, notwithstanding the popularity of subsequent recordings and broadcasts. One medium considered here is the American Yiddish Musical Theater, now more commonly known generically as Second Avenue, so named after the lower Manhattan district (today geographically identifiable as the East Village) where it made its debut and gained its first audiences, and where its most important and prestigious theaters stood at the zenith of that cultural phenomenon. Satellite theaters and companies—eventually often no less important—radiated and flourished as well during that era in other boroughs of New York City and across North America in cities with significant Yiddish-speaking populations, such as Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, and Montreal. New York–based troupes toured as well, bringing Yiddish theater to many additional communities. Songs in this category are from full-length theatrical productions based on plays or dramatic scenarios that were variously called operettas, musical comedies, romantic musicals, melodramas, musical shows, or simply musicals. These are to be distinguished from several other more literary Yiddish theatrical forms with less sustained and less widely appreciated, but nonetheless culturally significant life in America: serious Yiddish drama, Yiddish art theater, and Yiddish political theater (ARTEF). The other live format was Yiddish Vaudeville, played in music halls and variety houses, whose introduction preceded indigenous full-scale Yiddish theater in America. Vaudeville ranged from individual songs, dance routines, and comic monologues to skits, revues, and even one-act sketches and playlets. * * * The American Yiddish musical theater was a powerful product of the immigrant experience, and it became a highly successful import to Europe, England, South Africa, and South America. During its peak years, many of its leading stage personalities were virtual folk heroes among certain segments of American Jewish society. The musical forms, conventions, and styles of Second Avenue, especially as it advanced toward its mature stage, grew out of and relied heavily on Viennese and other Central European light operetta traditions. But its composi
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