Xanadu: The Marco Polo Musical is an original musical written and produced in 1953 by Seventh Army Special Services in Germany, the first of the numerous stage musicals, film musicals and songs inspired in part by the Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem, Kubla Khan with its familiar opening lines:
- In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
- A stately pleasure-dome decree
- Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
- Through caverns measureless to man
- Down to a sunless sea.
The score was written by a songwriting team, William P. Perry and William S. Wheeling, both of whom had been drawn into the Armed Forces shortly after their graduation from Harvard University. The cast and other members of the creative team were transferred from military units all over the world, and in spite of frequent cast changes as draftees were returned home, the show ran for five years and played both civilian and military theatres throughout Europe.
Read more about Xanadu: The Marco Polo Musical: History of The Show, Scenes and Music
Famous quotes containing the word musical:
“I was with Hercules and Cadmus once,
When in a wood of Crete they bayed the bear
With hounds of Sparta: never did I hear
Such gallant chiding; for besides the groves,
The skies, the fountains, every region near
Seemed all one mutual cry. I never heard
So musical a discord, such sweet thunder.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)