A List of Possible Candidates

Below I am including a [stream of consciousness] list of [mostly contemporary] works, composers and dramatists that I feel could fit into this genre. This list is in no particular order and will be updated as new examples come to light or to mind:

• I was looking at the ceiling and then I saw the sky & El Nino - Adams
• The Cave and Three Tales - Reich
• Einstein on the Beach [and many many others] - Glass
• Sequenzas - Berio
• Adventures and Nouvelles Aventures - Ligeti
• Improvement, Perfect Lives [and others] - Robert Ashley
• Nothing - Morton Feldman
• The music theatre works of R. Murray Schafer
• The plays of Mac Welman and Michel Tremblay
  
• Theatrical works by Crumb
• Sondheim
• Britten, Stravinsky and Orff's church parables and progressive stage works
• Myths and Hymns and Floyd Collins - Guettle
• Atlas [and others] - Meredith Monk
• Lost Highway - Neuwirth
• The Cradle will Rock - Blitzstein
• Some Chinese "Red" Operas
• The Carbon Copy Building, Aquanetta, Little Match Girl Passion, Decasia, Van Gogh and others - The crew at Bang on a Can [Lang, Gordon, Wolfe]
  
• Rehearsing Her Choir - Concept album by The Fiery Furnaces
• Tomorrow, In A Year - Concept album by The Knife
• I am a Bird Now - Concept album by Anthony and the Johnsons
  
• Mass - Bernstein
• Seven Deadly Sins [and others] - Weill
• 110 in the Shade and Celebration - Schmidt and Jones
• Urinetown
• The works of Pina Bausch
• The Manson Family: An Opera [and others] - Jon Moran [do yourself a favor and look him up on YouTube ... he is AMAZING!]
• Roratorio and the Europeras - Cage
• The works of Laurie Anderson, Robert Wilson, Amy X Nueberg, Louis Andriessen
• VALIS, Brain Opera, Transformations and others - Tod Machover
• Noises, Sounds & Sweet Airs - Michael Nyman
• Operas and Musicals from the Yiddish Theater tradition
• Ursonate - Kurt Schwitters
• Many oratorios, cantatas, choral fantasies and passions - Penderecki, Guibaldina, Golijov ...
• Erwartung and Pierrot Lunaire - Arnold Schoenberg

A Manifesto? A Dissertation? An Exploration.

This blog is an attempt to define, explore and encourage a genre of theater-with-music. The form of this blog will be non-linear, conversational, opinionated, and possibly self-contradicting. Bear with me. I am working out my ideas on the fly as you read and contribute. I encourage input, discussion and debate.

Throughout this blog, I will use the "re" form of theatre to signify the practice and theory of stage productions, while reserving the "er" version of theater to describe the physical buildings in which these works take place. This usage will not hold true in the case of a proper names.