The musical form of the musical is operatic, and it is a modern inheritance of classical opera art. It is the mainstream of modern musical drama. Musicals and operas are identical in form, and there is no obvious epoch between them.

Rather than saying that musical theater is a new art form, it is better to say that musical theater is a modern song and dance drama that inherits the art of opera. Although it has a comprehensive artistic approach, it still has a unique opera tradition in terms of art form. Analyze carefully; if the drama does not use dialogue and the dance drama does not use dance, then we will definitely not call it drama and dance drama, because dialogue and dance are the only important features of each of them. However, if a musical does not have dialogue and dance, it is still a musical, because it belongs to the type of opera and it inherits the characteristics of opera. It cannot be without music and singing. It just belongs to a category of drama. From opera, operetta, comic opera, musicals to musicals full of operatic colors. It has a very pure lineage, from Rossini, Verdi, Puccini, George Gershwin, Richard Rogers, Bernstein, Weber, Claude-Michel Schoenberg. These great figures either belong to the same European system, or have a master-disciple relationship like George Gershwin and Bernstein, or like Puccini and Weber from different eras but both have charming melodies. This is also I often mistakenly think that "When a Clear Day" and "Memories" are written by the same author. As Weber said: When he was writing, he didn't think there was any difference between musicals and operas; "Maybe it's because I was born in the 20th century. If I was born in the 18th century, I might have written operas." The annotation of musical theater in the Oxford Concise Dictionary of Music is as follows: MUSICAL musical theater, a dramatic genre similar to operetta [OPERETTA], but usually refers to the American musical performance developed from Broadway in New York. It is more complex and delicate than musical comedy [MUSICALCOMEDY] and closer to opera. If we look at musicals based on the judgment of the great German opera master Wagner on opera; that is, "opera is a drama unfolded with music." Then, we can also say that "a musical is a drama unfolded with music." The only difference between them is the musical style.

We have to admit the reality that in the past 100 years, opera has been increasingly regarded as a "white snow" in the art world, and representative creative works are rare. The audience that appreciates opera is also very small, because this type of audience must be based on a certain knowledge of opera and musical literacy. It requires the audience to have certain aesthetic conditions. Therefore, a large part of its audience is What we call “insiders.” But at the same time, in the transition from the post-industrial era to the information age, movies, television, and the Internet have had a profound influence on the public. It has changed the public's aesthetic needs to a large extent, and people's orientation towards entertainment has become more extensive. , an art form alone also needs to be able to obtain more information. Therefore, with its modern characteristics such as fashion, mass, and popularity, musicals have gradually occupied the market share of opera and become the mainstream of modern musical dramas.

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