Sung-through

A sung-through stage musical, musical film, opera, or other work of performance art is one in which songs entirely or almost entirely replace any spoken dialogue. Conversations, speeches, and musings are communicated musically, for example through a combination of recitative, aria, and arioso. Early versions of this include the Italian genre of opera buffa, a light-hearted form of opera that gained prominence in the 1750s.^[1][2]

A through-sung opera or other form of narrative work with continuous music may also be described as through-composed.

List of fully sung-through musicals

• Art Thief Musical!
• Bare: A Pop Opera
• Bumblescratch
• Cats^[3]
• Une chambre en ville
• Cricket
• Les Dix Commandements
• Evening-1910^[4]
• Evita
• Falsettos
• Hamilton: An American Musical^[5]
• The Human Comedy^[6]
• Jesus Christ Superstar
• Johanna
• Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
• Katy! the Musical
• Keating!
• King David
• Marry Me a Little
• Metalocalypse: The Doomstar Requiem
• Les Misérables^[7]
• Miss Saigon^[7]
• Murder Ballad
• Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812^[8]
• Notre-Dame de Paris
• Ordinary Days
• Quadrophenia
• Repo! The Genetic Opera
• Song and Dance
• Songs for a New World
• Starlight Express
• Starmania
• Tell Me on a Sunday^[9]
• The Ten Commandments: The Musical
• The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

List of sung-through musicals with occasional spoken lines

• Ain't Misbehavin'
• American Idiot
• Annette
• Aspects of Love
• Caroline or Change
• Dance of the Vampires
• Elisabeth
• Epic: The Musical
• The Golden Apple^[10]
• Hadestown
• In Trousers
• Jekyll & Hyde
• Jerry Springer: The Opera
• John & Jen
• Love Never Dies
• Martin Guerre
• The Most Happy Fella
• A New Brain^[11]
• Next to Normal^[12]
• Once on This Island^[13][14]
• Passing Strange
• The Last 5 Years
• The Phantom of the Opera
• Pink Floyd—The Wall
• The Pirate Queen
• Ragtime
• Razia's Shadow
• Rent
• Seussical^[15]
• Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
• Side Show^[16]
• Soon
• The Stingiest Man in Town
• Suffs^[17]
• Sunset Boulevard (musical)
• Superhero
• The Who's Tommy
• The Woman in White

List of sung-through musicals depending on the production

• Chess^[18][19]
  • Originally starting off as a concept album, the musical has a reputation for being re-written during every new production that is staged around the world. Some productions are completely sung-through, some have scattered lines, and some (notably the original Broadway production) are staged as book musicals.^[20]
• Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris^[21]

References

1. Richard Taruskin, (2009 ). Music in the Nineteenth Century: The Oxford History of Western Music. Oxford University Press
2. Lotte Eilskov Jensen, Joseph Theodoor Leerssen, Marita Mathijsen (eds). 2010. Free Access to the Past: Romanticism, Cultural Heritage and the Nation. Brill. p. 236.
3. Hummler, Richard (13 October 1982). "Cats". Variety. Archived from the original on 2 April 2019. Retrieved 2 April 2019.
4. Finkle, David (9 May 2016). "First Nighter: "Evening-1910" a Valuable Musical Evening-2016". HuffPost.
5. Donaldson, Kayleigh (2017). "How to Make a Hamilton Movie". Screen Rant.
6. "Ken Mandelbaum's MUSICALS ON DISC: Human Comedy and Ziegfeld Follies - Playbill.com". Archived from the original on 2015-09-24. Retrieved 2014-12-12.
7. Vermette, Margaret (2007). The Musical World of Boublil and Schonberg. Hal Leonard Corporation. pp. 37, 41. ISBN 9781557837158.
8. Clarke, David. "BWW CD Reviews: NATASHA, PIERRE AND THE GREAT COMET OF 1812 (Original Cast Recording) is Astonishingly Complex". BroadwayWorld.com.
9. "First Nighter: Andrew Lloyd Webber's So Low 'Stephen Ward' and Solo 'Tell Me on a Sunday'". Huffington Post. 19 February 2014.
10. Dietz, Dan (21 November 2012). Off Broadway Musicals, 1910Š—–2007: Casts, Credits, Songs, Critical Reception and Performance Data of More Than 1,800 Shows. McFarland. ISBN 9780786457311 – via Google Books.
11. "A New Brain, a CurtainUp review". www.curtainup.com.
12. Shubow, Charles. "BWW Reviews: NEXT TO NORMAL At Center Stage is Electrifying". BroadwayWorld.com.
13. "Charpo Canada -". Charpo Canada.
14. Hischak, Thomas S. (18 February 2011). Off-Broadway Musicals since 1919: From Greenwich Village Follies to The Toxic Avenger. Scarecrow Press. ISBN 9780810877726 – via Google Books.
15. "Munster High School Musical Opens Saturday." NWITimes. 2013.
16. Hetrick, Adam (2 August 2013). "Erin Davie and Emily Padgett Will Star in Re-Imagined Side Show at La Jolla and Kennedy Center". Playbill.
17. "Suffs Off-Broadway Review". 6 April 2022.
18. "Chess the Musical – The Production Company". www.australianstage.com.au.
19. "Chess: A Musical". www.metafilter.com.
20. Chess (musical)#Miscellaneous productions.2C concerts.2C and recordings .281989.E2.80.93present.29
21. Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris (film)#Soundtrack