| Book musical is a synthetic artistic form integrating play, dramatic poem, music, dancing, and stage art so as to develop the plot, portray characters and deliver concepts. Compared with other forms of musical, it pursues the conformity of drama and emphasizes the importance of realism. This core idea has laid solid foundation for future creation of book musical for its better development, but also has directly influenced the formation of other of book musicals from aspects of musical element, dramatic text, and choreography. Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein, the so-called "Golden combination in Broadway", have presented this creation concept to the most. They have cooperated and completed a series of book musical masterpieces in US, but also have guided American book musical to develop from youth to maturity then into its splendid golden time."The King and I" is adopted by a real experience that Anna, a UK teacher was invited by the Siam king to work as the royal tutor. Unlike previous musical topics, in this drama, Anna, who is outwardly yielding but inwardly firm, also gentle and quiet, has many disputes with the arrogant and dictatorial king on moral ideas, educational methods and principles. Two of them have started a funny but noble emotional journey during the unceasing conflicts and disputes. Thus we can see it presents the dramatic conflict produced by cultural difference of the east and west surrounded with the drama mainline of the affection between Anna and the king which grows naturally but restrained at the same time. Therefore it has not only shown the difference between races and social status, more importantly it has also deepened it into the difference between oriental and western civilizations. The whole play has presented mysterious and fancy oriental characteristics no matter in the music, dancing or the stage aesthetics. Although displayed through foreigner’s sunglasses, it is unprecedented as an inspection and exploration of oriental culture. Moreover, the particularity of the play theme can also be called an innovation of American book musicals. The performance of this musical has provided more space and diverse artistic vocabularies for the progress of American musicals, and on the other hand, it has also presented broad vision of musical material selection of Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein’s and the solid foundation of their artistic presentation technique. It has promoted the creation of book musical to a brand new level.This article makes a detailed analysis on the music creation features and the image-shaping in the musical "The King and I" from four chapters. The first chapter is mainly about the general introduction of the whole musical including the explanation of book musical, life and creation overview of the song writer and composer, Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein’, choreographer and director Robbins, the creation background and content introduction of "The King and I". The second chapter is the analysis on the musical creation characteristic by selecting the prelude and five representative arias for melody, rhythm, harmony, musical structure and tonality analysis, and then to sum up the music creation characteristic of this musical drama. The third chapter analyzes the image shaping of Anna and King through the musical elements and non-musical elements in this play. The fourth chapter is the review of the musical drama’s cultural connotation through the oriental element and conflict between oriental and western cultures in the stage artistic design. |
