The art of telling stories either through or with songs dates back to time immemorial. The ancient Greeks included music and dance in their stage comedies and tragedies as early as the 5th Century B.C. These plays featured sexual humor, political and social satire, jugglers, and anything else that might entertain the masses. The songs were often a means for the chorus to comment on the action, but they also took part in the plot, and musical solos were not unheard of.The Romans copied and expanded the forms and traditions of Greek theatre. The Third Century B.C. comedies of Plautus included song and dance routines performed with orchestral accompaniment. To make the dance steps more audible, Roman actors attached metal chips called “sabilla” to their stage footwear – the first tap shoes.

In the Middle Ages, Europe’s cultural mainstays included traveling minstrels and roving troupes of performers that offered popular songs and slapstick comedy. In the 12th and 13th centuries, there was also a tradition of religious dramas. Some of these works have survived, such as The Play of Daniel. Intended as liturgical teaching tools set to church chants, these plays developed into an autonomous form of musical theatre.This reached its apex during the Renaissance in the commedia dell’arte, an Italian tradition where raucous clown characters improvised their way through familiar stories. Formal musical theatre was rare in the Renaissance, but Moliere turned several of his plays into comedies with songs (music provided by Jean Baptiste Lully) when the court of Louis XIV demanded song and dance entertainments in the late 1600s.By the 1700s, two forms of musical theater were common in Britain, France and Germany – ballad operas that borrowed popular songs of the day and rewrote the lyrics; and comic operas, with original scores and mostly romantic plot lines.From its birth in the 1800s, the new musical has often spoofed opera, but it traces its main lineage to other sources. Vaudeville, burlesque, and many other forms are the true ancestors of the modern musical, but not opera. The Black Crook (1866) is considered by some historians to be the first musical.
The Golden Age of the Broadway musical is generally considered to have begun with Oklahoma! (1943) and to have ended with Hair (1968).

Modern Broadway musical style originated in two stages: first, the formation of a new kind of music; second, the development of a new way of using music within a play. Familiarity has been embraced by producers and investors anxious to guarantee that they recoup their considerable investments, if not show a healthy profit. It is less likely today that a sole producer backs a production. Corporate sponsors dominate Broadway, and often alliances are formed to stage musicals which require an investment of $10 million or more.