section_path: History/Contemporary, recent, and modernist trends/From musicals back towards opera
section_name: From musicals back towards opera
paragraph_text: From musicals back towards opera
  
  By the late 1930s, some musicals began to be written with a more operatic structure. These works include complex polyphonic ensembles and reflect musical developments of their times. Porgy and Bess (1935), influenced by jazz styles, and Candide (1956), with its sweeping, lyrical passages and farcical parodies of opera, both opened on Broadway but became accepted as part of the opera repertory. Popular musicals such as Show Boat, West Side Story, Brigadoon, Sweeney Todd, Passion, Evita, The Light in the Piazza, The Phantom of the Opera and others tell dramatic stories through complex music and in the 2010s they are sometimes seen in opera houses. The Most Happy Fella (1952) is quasi-operatic and has been revived by the New York City Opera. Other rock-influenced musicals, such as Tommy (1969) and Jesus Christ Superstar (1971), Les Misérables (1980), Rent (1996), Spring Awakening (2006), and Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 (2012) employ various operatic conventions, such as through composition, recitative instead of dialogue, and leitmotifs.