Music Matters

Tenor Nicky Spence explores the connections between the worlds of classical and musical theatre, beginning with how the latter was born out of operetta in the early 20th century, with music from Offenbach, Lehár, Noël Coward, George Gershwin, Richard Rodgers and Cole Porter. Nicky speaks to musicologist Dominic Broomfield-McHugh about the phenomenon of Gilbert and Sullivan, 1930s modernism on Broadway, and how Rodgers and Hammerstein created the template for the modern musical. Nicky and his pianist husband Dylan Perez also perform musical excerpts from Franz Lehár's The Merry Widow and Noël Coward's Bitter Sweet, drawing out hidden connections.