#spring awakening and rent are probably the closest but they are completely rock musicals

[cto10121]

@meganphntmgrl replied to your post:  European Musical Tropes

I think… a lot of non-European musicals function similarly.

So, what, most non-European musicals are nigh sung-through quasi operetta epics that deal with forbidden love, commentary social injustice, unjust/dystopian societies, depression/existential despair, little to no humor except for Tanz, have anthropormorphic versions of abstract concepts going about haunting human characters, and end tragically with the death of the protagonists and/or minor characters?

Yeah, not quite. 

True, American and British musicals have (in general) been getting more angsty, dark, tragic, with pop-rock/classical epic hybrid scores and what-have-you, (although I’d argue that I think that trend is finally leaving us), but they are still not quite the same. Except for Andrew Lloyd Webber, definitely classically-inspired, most Anglo musicals are more like plays with music than music with a plot; recently, they seem to be going for low-key social-issue-driven projects - either that, or straight movie-to-musical adaptations, Disney or otherwise. Freak hits like Hamilton don’t fit either that or the European style. And that’s only recent American/Broadway musicals. Traditionally, American musicals, in structure, were comic plays with happy endings until late 70s/80s, returning for a brief stint in the 90s and cropping up on occasion. Outliers like West Side Story and Porgy and Bess (out of the top of my head) were composer pet projects for the most part, the latter an outright experiment by Gershwin, heavily classically-influenced.

European musicals, on the other hand, had a tradition of opera and operetta that they followed with or without American influence. Hence the high-octane melodrama, recitatives (American musicals tend to dislike recitatives in general, preferring dialogue), poor character development, symbolism, and tragic deaths. 

Of course, there’s the whole forbidden-love or just love thing is a staple of both kinds, always ubiquitous. Showstopping solos, I Am/I Want numbers, love duets, ensemble numbers - things part-and-parcel of the musical for ages. Structurally, not too dissimilar. But themes like tragedy, existential despair, and suicide are rare in American musicals (which is weird because the blues are so American it’s not even funny). These European musicals in general seem to show modern concerns more starkly - the plight of migrants (Notre Dame), corrupt societies plagued with social ills (Starmania, RetJ), marginalized people struggling against their societal fate (Elisabeth, Notre Dame), love and desire mixed in with intimations of the supernatural or the fantastical (Notre Dame, Elisabeth, RetJ, Tanz, pretty much all of them). And then there is the solipsism of individualism in Elisabeth and Starmania, which leads to depression and suicidal thoughts. Quite different than, say, in Hamilton or the Book of Mormon or the Last Five Years or Matilda. or any of the hits on Broadway.