Thesis (M.A.)--Florida State University, 2004. / Advisor: Dr. Anita Gonzalez, Florida State University, School of Theatre. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed 6/16/04). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.F.A.)--University of Central Florida, 2009. / Adviser: Nicholas Wuehrmann. Includes bibliographical references (p. 68-69).

This dissertation examines the Americanization of immigrants as a defining theme in American musical theater. It does so through studies of productions from across the past century about Irish Americans, Chinese Americans, and Latino/a Americans, and in each case, at least one of the creators is a member of the ethnic American group depicted. I contend that these artists found the musical to be a constructive tool for voicing their experiences of the struggle of Americanization and broadening notions of American identity. The resulting narrative expands upon the substantial "golden age"-centered literature on Jewish assimilation and the American musical. Decentralizing the "golden age," I show how the genre has helped write into cultural citizenship a broad range of immigrant groups during fraught periods in which their national belonging was contested. I draw upon a wide range of disciplines - especially immigration history, ethnic studies, and American studies as well as musicology - and diverse methods, including archival research, oral history, textual and musical analysis, reception history, and historically based hermeneutics. / Music

This thesis examines the professional musical stage of Montreal in the decade following the First World War. Throughout the 1920s, almost all of the city's musical theatre attractions were foreign in origin, and were staged by American, French, and British roadshow companies, arriving mainly from New York City. Analysis of Montreal's musical theatre entertainment and satellite relationship with Broadway highlights the growing cultural influence of the United States upon Quebec society in the interwar period. As a northern outpost of Broadway, Montreal was directly affected by the profound transformation of the entertainment industry of the United States. After peaking in the second half of the decade, the musical stage of Montreal was gradually supplanted by the decline of the roadshow system, the advent of the sound film, the onset of the Great Depression, and the resurgence of local stock theatre companies. / The northern extension of Broadway into Montreal heightened divisions within Montreal society between a growing middle class of businessmen, managers, and other professionals who embraced modernity and cultural change, and more conservative forces who favoured the traditional Quebec based on religious and nationalist values. While the musical attractions sent northwards from Broadway were a popular divertissement for a large proportion of Montrealers from all social classes and linguistic backgrounds, they were abhorred by the province's clerical and nationalist elites and their supporters who regarded them as a threat to the survival of traditional French Canadian values and culture.

<p>This dissertation seeks to position the music of American arranger-orchestrator-composer Conrad Salinger (1901-62) as one of the key factors in creating the larger camp aesthetic movement in MGM film musicals of the 1940s and 1950s. The investigation primarily examines Salinger's arranging and orchestrating practices in transcriptions and conductor's scores of musical numbers from MGM films, though some scores from Broadway shows are also considered. Additionally, Salinger's style is frequently compared to other arrangers, so as to establish the unique qualities of his music that set it apart from his contemporaries from both a technical and an aesthetic standpoint and that made it desirable as an object of imitation. By inquiring into his musical practices' relationship to his subjectivity as a gay person in the era of "the closet," this analysis both proposes and confirms Salinger's importance to the MGM camp aesthetic. With the concept of "musical camp" thus established, the dissertation subsequently demonstrates its capacity to produce new readings of the politics of national belonging and gender that manifest in various musical numbers.</p> / Dissertation

Catherine ('Kitty') Clive (1711-1785) was the most famous singer-actress of mideighteenth century London, and one of the first women whom Drury Lane managers sought to popularize specifically as a singer. Drawing on theories of star construction in cinema, this thesis explores how the public persona of Mrs Clive 'composed' the music she sang. A key ingredient in star production is the wide-ranging dissemination of the star's image. The first chapter explains how the mid-eighteenth star was produced, outlining the period equivalents to what film scholars consider the sources of modern stardom: promotion, publicity, criticism and the work. This last means of star production is considered according to period traditions of comic writing, acting and spectatorship. These activities were part of the practice, begun in the Restoration, of creating a 'line' or metacharacter to fit the skills, reputation and unique acting mannerisms of principal players. The second chapter examines the vehicle of Mrs Clive's initial success, ballad opera. Ballad opera brought to the London stage the musical and discursive traditions of the street ballad singer, who typically communicated with audiences directly through indigenous, popular tunes. Direct address and native pedigree were to remain key elements in Mrs Clive's music, regardless of the genre she was singing. Chapters 3 to 5 trace three distinct phases in Mrs Clive's star production. Chapter 3 studies her promotion by Henry Carey, who taught her distinctive vocal techniques ('natural' singing; mimicry of opera singers) and supplied a sophisticated ballad-style repertory of which she was the chief exponent, 1728-32. Through Mrs Clive, Carey promoted his music and convictions - song in 'sublimated ballad style', the attractiveness of native traditions, female rights - and these became hallmarks of the Clive persona. Chapter 4 considers Henry Fielding's Clive publicity in his musical comedies and writings for her, 1732-6. Initially, he vivified the impudent nymph of her first 1729 mezzotint through stage characters, songs and epilogues. The criticism she drew for her refusal to join 1733-4 Drury Lane actors' rebellion forced him to re-invent Mrs Clive as a 'pious daughter'. In order to galvanize support for her, he broadened his publicity and made her an icon of conservative patriotic values and an enemy of Italian opera. Chapter 5 investigates Mrs Clive's management of her own image in her 1736 battle to retain the lead role in The Beggar's Opera. After her triumph, the duties of her new writer James Miller were simply to reflect audience perception of her. Chapters 6 and 7 analyse how the Clive persona, now rooted in public fantasy, shaped her two most important 'high style' musical roles, first in Thomas Arne's Comus, and then in Handel's Samson. Chapter 6 shows how the themes and musical procedures typical of the Clive persona were wedded to Milton's Comus, which then became the imaginative touchstone for a 'Comus' environment at the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. Chapter 7 examines her history as mediator of, and collaborator with, Handel, and shows how Handel's conceptualization of Dalilah in Samson mirrored that of Arne's Euphrosyne in Comus. Chapter 8 describes her ascendancy into 'polite society' through her friendship with Horace Walpole, and summarizes the means by which Mrs Clive's talents and audience perception of her shaped the works she performed.

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Western Sydney, 2007. / A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the University of Western Sydney, College of Arts, School of Communication Arts. Includes bibliography.

Thesis (M.F.A.)--University of Central Florida, 2009. / Adviser: Steven Chicurel. Includes bibliographical references (p. 90-91).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 498-522).

Thesis (doctoral) - Universität, Hamburg, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 529-539) and index.