Rogers and Hammersteins Carousel Carousel opened on April 19th 1945 at the Majestic Theater after significant out

of town revisions and was a Broadway, and later West End, success. This show was the second major Rogers and Hammerstein collaboration, and was the first show the pair wrote after Oklahoma!. Not surprisingly, the show was compared heavily to the duos first smash hit. One reviewer famously mentioned the song That Was a Real Nice Clambake as being very much in the style of their previous success, which was only appropriate considering the fact that the song was originally written for Oklahoma! under the title That Was a Real Nice Hayride. Though Carousel never achieved the same level of commercial success as its predecessor, it would go on to be revived several times and was ultimately named Time Magazines Best Musical of the Twentieth Century, and was supposedly Richard Rogers favorite musical he ever wrote. The story of Carousel is an adaptation of the play Liliom, written by Ferenc Molinar in 1909. Carousel has almost the exact same plot as Liliom, save that the Rogers and Hammerstein transported the story from Budapest to the coast of Maine, changed character names, and the fact that the ending was of the musical was changed to be more hopeful than that of its predecessor. In Liliom, the main character, Liliom (corresponding to Billy), snaps at his daughter when visiting her in the afterlife and slaps her and the audience is left to believe that he was taken to hell in punishment. Both pieces include his daughters iconic description of a slap that felt like a kiss or a caress. Billy is often seen as a difficult protagonist to sympathize with due to his tendency toward violence, especially around his family, and it is largely through his music that Rogers and Hammerstein were able to make him a heroic character. Rogers and Hammerstein were both reluctant to adapt Liliom at first, but upon approaching the project, the first thing they did was write Billy Bigelows Act I closer The Soliloquy. Once this pivotal moment of the show was written, they proceeded to build the rest of the show around it. This number features transitions between several different musical modes and styles, reflecting Billys constantly shifting emotional response to finding out that he is going to be a father. Geoffrey Block observes a number of important moments musically in The Soliloquy that draw connections between Billys focus at this moment and other parts of the musical. Billy uses distinctive dotted-eight note rhythms to talk about his hypothetical daughter, and this same rhythmic form has been associated with his wife Julie, indicative of the way he conflates the two. Another interesting aspect of this show as a whole is the way is uses waltzes. In most popular American musical theater at the time, waltzes were used as an indication of romantic love. In Carousel, however, the waltz is instead used as the theme music of the ride itself and Julie and Billy are not given the chance to sing a waltz together during their courtship as one might expect. Rather, the only time Billy hints close to a waltz is during his repeated triplets in The Soliloquy. Billy associates these rhythmic moments with his more comfortable past as a Carousel barker. There is a great deal more musical connection to be found between this number and the rest of the show, but a more detailed treatment would require a (much) longer essay. Carousel is remembered as a show for many reasons, including its powerful score and the new themes it brought to Broadway. One of its most important contributions, however, was that Rogers and Hammerstein continued pushing the bar after their success with Oklahoma!. They brought in characters who didnt have simple love stories, and encouraged audiences to look into the lives of broken families and how each person expresses and feels love in a unique way