• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Ransom Center Magazine

  • Articles
  • Sections
    • Art
    • Books + Manuscripts
    • Conservation
    • Exhibitions + Events
    • Film
    • Literature
    • Photography
    • Research + Teaching
    • Theatre + Performing Arts
  • Print Edition

New digital collection of The Black Crook musical released

September 8, 2016 - Eric Colleary

New digital collection of The Black Crook musical released

The Harry Ransom Center is proud to announce that our collection of materials relating to the 1866 megamusical The Black Crook has been fully digitized in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the production. The collection is now publicly available through our online Digital Collections gallery.

Napoleon Sarony (American, 1821-1879), [Pauline Markham in a production of The Black Crook], undated, Albumen print, 10.0 x 14.2 cm, The Black Crook Collection.
Napoleon Sarony (American, 1821-1879), [Pauline Markham in a production of “The Black Crook”], undated, Albumen print, 10.0 x 14.2 cm, The Black Crook Collection.
When The Black Crook opened at Niblo’s Garden on September 12, 1866, it was one of the most spectacular and commercially successful productions in American theater history to that date. The original production ran for a record 474 performances and earned over a million dollars. Theater historians once claimed The Black Crook as the earliest example of what would become the American musical. Now, while scholars recognize elements of the musical form in earlier productions, The Black Crook can be seen as a highly influential prototype for the contemporary megamusical—more in the vein of Andrew Lloyd Webber perhaps than Stephen Sondheim.

 

Cover of sheet music for "The Black Crook Waltzes,” 1867.
Cover of sheet music for “The Black Crook Waltzes,” 1867.

The opening night performance ran over six hours and offered a full evening’s entertainment of comedy, drama, romance, tragedy, dance, music, and unparalleled spectacle. The scenic machinery had been imported from Europe and cost between $25,000 and $55,000—an enormous sum for the time. It is rumored to have taken over 50 stagehands to operate. A chorus of over 100 dancers performed as fairies in the glittering cave of Queen Stalacta in one scene, and in another, advanced lighting effects created a hurricane in the Harz mountains of Northern Germany.

 

Many of the dancers wore flesh-colored tights, making it appear that their legs were scandalously nude, much to the delight of audiences and chagrin of critics. Preachers denounced the show from their pulpits, and artists lamented the direction the American theater seemed to be heading.

 

“The Black Crook unmasked — Up in the flies — Gauzy nymphs going up in the gridiron to descend to earth,” 1866
“The Black Crook unmasked—Up in the flies—Gauzy nymphs going up in the gridiron to descend to earth,” 1866.

In a letter from the Ransom Center collections, the acclaimed American actor Edwin Forrest wrote to his solicitor and friend Daniel Dougherty about the state of the American theater. “The Black Crook—alas for the public taste—is quite as successful as when it was first performed more than a year ago.” Charles Dickens was even more pointed in a March 1968 letter to the English actor William Charles Macready:

 

I will mention here that one of the Proprietors of my New York Hotel is one of the Proprietors of Niblo’s and the most active. Consequently, I have seen The Black Crook and The White Faun in majesty from an arm-chair in the first entrance. P.S. more than once. Of these astonishing dramas, I beg to report (seriously) that I have found no human creature “behind,” who has the slightest idea what they are about (‘pon my honor, my Dearest Macready!) and that having some amiable small talk with a neat little Spanish woman who is the Première Danseuse, I asked her, in joke, to let me measure her skirt with my dress glove. Holding the glove by the tip of the fore-finger, I found the skirt to be just three gloves long—and yet its length was much in excess of the skirts of 200 other ladies whom the carpenters were, at that moment, getting into their places for a transformation scene—on revolving columns—on wire and travellers—in iron cradles—up in the flies down in the cellars—on every possible description of float that Wilmot, gone distracted, could imagine.

(From The Selected Letters of Charles Dickens. Edited by F. W. Dupee. New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1960)

 

Dickens made it clear, as did many newspaper reviewers, that the enormous popularity of the production was owed not to the book by Charles Barras or the music by Thomas Baker, but rather by the spectacle and sexuality offered to audiences.

 

The Black Crook would be revived for decades until about the 1940s when the advent of World War II and the changing tastes of the American theater made it fall out of favor. As part of the 150th anniversary celebrations, a small-scale revival will be remounted at the Abrons Art Center in New York from September 17 through October 6, 2016.

Interior of the opera house at Niblo’s Garden, New York, 1853
Interior of the opera house at Niblo’s Garden, New York, 1853.

The collection of Black Crook materials at the Ransom Center includes original sheet music, playbills, programs, clippings, drawings, photographs, and books relating to the first production and its subsequent iterations. These materials can now be viewed online through the Ransom Center’s Digital Collections gallery.


Dr. Eric Colleary is the Cline Curator of Theater and Performing Arts at the Harry Ransom Center.

Filed Under: Digital Collections, Theatre + Performing Arts Tagged With: Abrons Art Center, Art, Broadway, culture, dance, Edwin Forrest, Eric Colleary, performing art, stage, The Black Crook, theater, theatre, William Charles Macready

About Eric Colleary

Colleary oversees research, access, and interpretation of the Ransom Center’s theater and performing arts materials.

Primary Sidebar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4_kazYMjNM

Recent Posts

  • Celebrate with us in 2023
  • Photographer Laura Wilson delves into the lives of writers with stunning portraits
  • A childhood gift inspires a lifelong passion for India and map-collecting
  • “Dog” by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
  • A Greek fragment is the first-known New Testament papyrus written on the front side of a scroll

Tags

acquisition Alice's Adventures in Wonderland archive archives Art Books Cataloging Conservation Council on Library and Information Resources David Foster Wallace David O. Selznick digitization exhibition Exhibitions Fellows Find Fellowships Film Frank Reaugh Frank Reaugh: Landscapes of Texas and the American West Gabriel Garcia Marquez Gabriel Garcia Marquez archive Gone with the Wind I have seen the Future: Norman Bel Geddes Designs America Lewis Carroll literature Magnum Photos Manuscripts Meet the Staff Nobel Prize Norman Bel Geddes Norman Mailer Performing Arts Photography poetry preservation Publishing Research Robert De Niro Shakespeare theater The King James Bible: Its History and Influence The Making of Gone With The Wind Undergraduate What is Research? World War I

Archives

Before Footer

Sign up for eNews

Our monthly newsletter highlights news, exhibitions, and programs.

Connect With Us

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

About

Ransom Center Magazine is an online and print publication sharing stories and news about the Harry Ransom Center, its collections, and the creative community surrounding it.

Copyright © 2023 Harry Ransom Center

Web Accessibility · Web Privacy