All of the instruments that Bernstein used in the original production of WEST SIDE STORY were acoustic except for an electric guitar. Instrumentation also flavors the audience's perceptions when determining if something is musical theatre or classical opera (operetta).
Even an old chubby lady playing the heroine who is supposed to be the most beautiful girl in the world succeeds in convincing the audience by expressing the character's emotions through her voice. The singers' looks are not that important once we move several scenes into the opera. In operas, it really does not matter if the character whose description is "handsome" is actually handsome so long as the singer's voice is spectacular. In order to make those hard vocal lines come out the way they should, singers cannot have fast body movements and must make sure they are facing the audience so that their vocal timbres stay the same. For example, there are many places where singers have to leap up to a high note (like soprano's high C) and drop back down to another voice range instantly, and melismas (many notes are sung while sustaining a syllable) are used often. Additionally, classical techniques are often called for in the score. The vocal range for each character is expansive, and goes up higher than a normal speaking voice. The vocal writing of this piece is more operatic than that of standard Broadway musicals. While the music and story of CANDIDE do not rely on dance, the piece challenges singers in different ways. While costumes add to the level of realism, actors still rely on skills to imitate the movements and vocal inflections of their characters. Actors or singers in musicals usually physically resemble the characters they are playing. This results in an obvious difference in casting. We call a performer who sings in musical theatre an actor or a singer, but rarely call an opera singer an actor. Bernstein's dance score for this piece challenges the choreographers to express the anger, hatred, frustration, energy, and other strong emotions of the characters through dance movements. The Dance at the Gym from the original production of WEST SIDE STORYīecause movement plays a major role in the storytelling of this piece, WEST SIDE STORY needs performers who can dance, act and sing well. In WEST SIDE STORY, Bernstein and his writing collaborators planned the dance music to be as equally important as the words and songs in order to move the plot forward. That is because when composers write music that describes the characters' lives in a specific time or location, they study the culture and imagine that they are in the story themselves so that they can write something that describes the characters' lives most effectively. In most cases, music composed to stories set in Europe sounds different from the music of stories set in the Americas. Regardless of the language in which the script is written, when and where the story is set greatly affects the musical atmosphere. CANDIDE, on the other hand, is set in Europe in the 18th century. There are two groups of characters: a bunch of young Puerto Ricans who live in New York's Upper West Side, and a group of young Americans who live in the same area. The story of WEST SIDE STORY is based on the play, Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. However, CANDIDE is often considered an operetta and WEST SIDE STORY is considered a musical, even though the same composer wrote the music to both shows. There is no question that CANDIDE and WEST SIDE STORY are both theatrical works where music plays a big role in storytelling. The difference among them is how music contributes to the structure and plot of the story. Musical theatre, opera and operetta almost always include both words and music. New York City Opera recently did a production of CANDIDE in the spring season and WEST SIDE STORY came back to Broadway early this year. Of the many famous theatre works that Leonard Bernstein wrote with his collaborators, CANDIDE and WEST SIDE STORY still remain immensely popular. Bernstein was a great educator, conductor, and music director, as well as a composer of classical, film, and theatre music. Born in 1918, this prolific artist created a wide variety of music until he died in 1990 at the age of 72. Bernstein working on WEST SIDE STORY with lyricist Stephen SondheimĪugust 25th marks composer Leonard Bernstein's birthday.