biography
| name: |
Rodgers, (Charles) Richard
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1902–79)
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| biography:
| Composer, born in New York City, New York, USA. He attended Columbia University and studied music, and by age 17 was collaborating with Lorenz Hart on amateur musicals. With Hart as lyricist, during the 1920s–30s he broke from the common Tin Pan Alley musical to develop the musical play. They produced 14 shows containing many popular songs while further integrating libretto, music, and dance. On Your Toes (1936), choreographed by George Balanchine, included his first broad arrangement for ballet sequences (including ‘Slaughter on Tenth Avenue’), while Pal Joey (1940) focused on an amoral nightclub owner. Among his many standards with Hart are ‘My Funny Valentine’ (1937) and ‘Bewitched’ (1940). After Hart's death in 1943, Rodgers teamed up with Oscar Hammerstein II and created his most popular stage works. Their masterpiece, Oklahoma! (1943), is called the first American vernacular opera; it won the Pulitzer Prize in drama. Their next work, Carousel (1945), also a classic, contains some of Rodgers' finest music. Their last musicals, South Pacific (1949), The King and I (1951), and The Sound of Music (1959), contained many famous songs, and were highly successful on screen as well as stage. After Hammerstein's death (1960), Rodgers either wrote his own lyrics or collaborated with others for another 20 years of works for theatre and television. |
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