Kern, Bill

A short while ago, we did a webinar on the 1927 musical Show Boat as part of our series “A Night at the Opera.” Show Boat was a groundbreaking work and arguably the first of the genre of opera that we call “Broadway Musical.” Broadway Musicals are simply our American version of dialogue opera, a classification that includes operatic standards like Mozart’s The Magic Flute, Beethoven’s Fidelio, and Weber’s Der Freischütz.

Written by Jerome Kern (1885-1945) and Oscar Hammerstein II (1895-1960), the musical is based on the 1926 novel by Enda Ferber. Musical theater at the time focused more on light entertainment, without serious or cohesive drama, and visual spectacles exemplified by The Ziegfeld Follies. Show Boat represented a radical departure with its more substantial drama and operatic form. Yet it was Florenz Ziegfeld himself who produced Show Boat on Broadway, virtually guaranteeing its success.

Many people immediately recognize the hit songs from Show Boat: Ol’ Man River, Make Believe, and Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man. The Song Bill was originally written for a different musical, Oh, Lady, Lady!! in 1917 by Kern and P. G. Wodehouse, but it was eliminated as too serious for that musical. It was inserted instead into the more serious Show Boat, with Hammerstein making a few modifications to the lyrics.