A Study On The Artistic Characteristics Of The Musical "The King And I"

The musical “King and I” is one of the masterpieces of Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein II,the Golden Broadway combination,which premiered on Broadway in 1951.And won a number of Tony and Donaldson awards.In the course of the creation of the play,the author not only inherited the tradition of creating musical comedy in the old days,but also boldly broke through the shackles of the creation and presentation of European and American themes,in music Both drama and dance incorporate and draw lessons from the exotic Asian themes,skillfully present different cultural elements between the East and the West,and inject new blood and vitality into the musical drama world.This is also one of the early works by Broadway to create Oriental musicals from a Westerner's perspective.This work reflects the retreat and integration of Oriental culture(Buddhist culture)and western culture(Christian culture)in the context of Western colonialism,starting from the complex cultural conflicts between two different countries.And then it shows the profound social themes such as the cultural differences between the East and the West and the status of women.This musical,which is based on British culture and Thai culture,is also the first musical in the history of American musicals.It is a high-level summary of the contemporary style and the consciousness of treating foreign cultures in the United States and creates an artistic road from native musical theme to cultural theme development in other countries.It can be seen that no matter in the ideological,artistic,entertainment or commercial development has made a major breakthrough and innovation.“Prejudice” and“ tolerance” are the inner narrative clues of the play,which convey the theme of "Love can overcome all" and reach its peak in the platonic spiritual love between the King and Anna.Highlight the tolerance of foreign culture and profound humanistic feelings.In this paper,the study of the play is divided into three chapters,including the overview of the King and me,the analysis of the characters of the drama,and the analysis of the characteristics of the music and dance in the play.The first chapter is divided into three sections:Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein II's life creation,the historical origin and plot of King and I,and the last two chapters are the main angles of this paper.It analyzes and interprets the characters of drama,music and dance.The second chapter is the analysis of the drama characters of the play,mainly to the two main characters and other secondary characters in the play,the character and drama action analysis,each character in the drama content under the certain action changes.It not only reproduces the original storyline,but also constructs a new dramatic situation in the intertwined development of this kind of characters.The third chapter is the analysis of the prelude and the musical characteristics of the important segments and the important dance segments in the play.The author hopes to demonstrate the unity of objective narrative and subjective lyricism of the musical "King and I" through the study of the play,and at the same time to provide some reference experience for the creation of musical drama in our country.