Here comes the cat! On March 28th, 2003, Cat, the most popular western musical, landed in China and gave its first China performance in Shanghai. Meanwhile, Cats will perform more than 65,438+000 performances in Shanghai and Beijing, which is unprecedented in the performance market in China. In the past 22 years, this world-famous musical Cat is not only the longest-running musical in London, England and Broadway, but also an unprecedented legend in the entertainment industry, with a record of 9,000 performances in more than 200 countries around the world. On the trip to China of Cats, Shanghai Translation Publishing House, which exclusively introduced the copyright of musical scripts, said: "Cats conquered the world, not only the gorgeous stage and bright costumes, but also infected people with profound cultural charm. As a cultural annotation, the drama Cat landed on the China stage, which is expected to provide reference for foreign cultural industries to transform elegant culture into popular culture with both refined and popular tastes.

The origin of cats

Generally speaking, the script of a musical should match the music. Therefore, before music creation, the screenwriter should discuss with the composer to reach a certain tacit understanding, and then the screenwriter can start to create, so as to give the composer the greatest space to display his musical talents. Cats are born a little differently. The script of Cat is based on Thomas, an English poet who is famous for his long poem The Waste Land. Stern? Thomas stearns Eliot's poetry collection "The Old Cat Elf Who is Good at Dressing Up" was originally written by Nobel Prize in Literature winner Eliot for children, so the poem is full of imagination and innocence. Poetry was completed in two months, 1939 and 10, while the creation of the musical Cat began in 1977, with a difference of 38 years. When Eliot died in 1965, he never imagined that his poem would become the script of the most popular musical in the world in a few years.

Famous music composer Andrew? Lauder? Andrew Lloyd Webber began to compose music for "Old Cat Elf Good at Dressing" on 1977. He wrote many fragments for this poem. In fact, he did this because he was interested in reading this poem when he was a child. At first, Weber only intended to write some sketches to be performed on the stage, and had no idea of creating musicals at all. Because this poem has no dramatic plot and tension, it does not have the conditions to create a musical. 1980, in Edmonton Music Festival, Weber performed several pieces he wrote. At that time, Eliot's widow Valerie? Valerie Eliot also attended the music festival and brought many unpublished poems and stories to Weber, so because of this accidental opportunity, Weber was unexpectedly inspired by the creation of musicals. He thinks that the experience of "charming cat" is the theme of the story. If you add these poems and stories, a musical can be formed.

Nevertheless, Weber's idea of writing cats was opposed by most people, who thought it would be a fatal mistake to write musicals with poems. The reason is that a musical needs a plot, and it is impossible to express the plot with poetry as a script, and it is impossible for Eliot and Weber, the authors of poetry, to communicate in advance. Weber's attitude is that my musical drama can be independent of the plot. As long as there is atmosphere, he believes that musicals can move people without the plot. Weber recruited a group of top directors, choreographers and costume designers ... Through their joint efforts, Cat was officially staged in London on May 198 1 day. Before the performance, as people expected at first, people were not optimistic about the future of cats. People always think that putting on a musical based on children's poems will only bring disastrous consequences. Even until the day before the performance, the troupe did not raise enough funds, and the theater owner was disheartened and even wanted to break the contract and quit. As for the later situation, as we all know, the premiere of Cat became an instant hit and became a musical that attracted worldwide attention. No one expected that Cat could be the longest-running musical so far, and no one expected that a musical that didn't win by plot could be so touching.

Forever memories

Compared with other famous musicals, China audiences are most familiar with Cat. The reason is nothing more than the power of a song in the play, that is, memories. Since the birth of "Cat", the song "Memories" has spread all over the world, and the melody of weeping can catch people's hearts at once. Most people don't know until they hear memories (full text ***5007 words).