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Oscar Hammerstein II made his initial mark on the American theatre in the 1920s as the author of the most popular operettas of the day. It was an era that still reveled in big luscious melodies by Victor Herbert, Rudolph Friml and Sigmund Romberg, and the outlandish, spectacle-laced plots that were the signature feature of the form. Collaborating with Romberg, Hammerstein had great success portraying the derring-do world of the Canadian Mounties in Rose Marie and cemented his reputation with The Desert Song, an even more exotic, overripe romance featuring Arabian intrigue, breathless heroism and sex in tents.

In 1927, he and Jerome Kern took a great leap forward, and more or less laid the groundwork for what was to become the modern musical play. Show Boat, their epic treatment of race, ill-fated romance and show business on the Mississippi River, promised a revolution in the form. But the revolution was put on hold; a year later, Hammerstein and Romberg were back on the boards with a new operetta, The New Moon, featuring pirates in the Louisiana Territory in the 1790s. As it happens, The New Moon proved to be the last great success of the operetta era. Broadway was quickly overtaken by jazz-age comedy and music that swung: the Gershwins, Porter and Rodgers & Hart. Hammerstein was still more than a decade away from finding the collaborator with whom he would have his greatest impact, Richard Rodgers. Continued...