On The Musical "I, Don Quixote," The Main Character Of Music Image

In the early18th century, musical theater, a modern genre of stage performancecombining songs, dance, acting and choreography, appeared on the theater scene ofEurope and America after a series of evolutions from other theatrical genres such asoperetta, vaudeville, burlesque and follies. Since then, musicals have attracted theattention of an ever increasing number of music lovers.Man of La Mancha, a Broadway musical adapted from Spanish novelistCervantes’ Don Quixote de la Mancha, has run for over2,000performances since itsdebut in1965and won several international awards. Truly a Broadway classic, itranks one of the top30long-running Broadway musicals.As an increasing number of musicals being introduced to China in recent years,this genre has gradually attracted the attention of Chinese fans as well as researchers.Since the introduction of Man of La Mancha in2012, the Chinese audience hasformed an understanding of the idealistic “Don Quixote spirit” interpreted by themusical.This thesis attempts to analyze the musical characterization of the leadingcharacters in this influential musical work with the following parts:The introduction presents the rationale and significance of this research andpresents an overview of current studies as well as the major resources, methodologyand contents of the present study. Chapter I briefly introduces the musical theater,including its development, definition and classification, aiming at laying a theoreticalfoundation for further analysis. This chapter also analyzes the script structure of Manof La Mancha from the perspectives of the writing processes of both the originalnovel and the musical and of the features of the script. Chapter II analyzes thedramatic characterization of the leading characters of the musical, seeking to find thetransformations inflicted upon these characters through dramatic conflicts. Chapter III,the key section of this thesis, gives an individual analysis of the musicalcharacterization of each leading character through the main arias of them. Chapter IVholds a brief discussion of the interpretation of the musical in the light of the author’sown performance. The conclusion sums up the major discussions of the thesis.