The Black Crook

The Black Crook
Finale of The Black Crook
Music	Thomas Baker Giuseppe Operti George Bickwell
Lyrics	Theodore Kennick
Book	Charles M. Barras
Productions	1866 Broadway 1870 Broadway revival 1872 West End 1873 Broadway revival

The Black Crook is a work of musical theatre first produced in New York City with great success in 1866. Many theatre writers have cautiously identified The Black Crook as the first popular piece that conforms to the modern notion of a musical.^[1] The book is by Charles M. Barras. The music, selected and arranged by Thomas Baker, consists mostly of adaptations, but it included some new songs composed for the piece, notably "You Naughty, Naughty Men". The story is a Faustian melodramatic romantic comedy, but the production became famous for its spectacular special effects and skimpy costumes.

It opened on September 12, 1866 at the 3,200-seat Niblo's Garden on Broadway in Manhattan and ran for a record-breaking 474 performances. It was then toured extensively for decades and revived on Broadway in 1870–71, 1871–72 and many more times after that. The Black Crook is often considered a prototype of the modern musical in that its popular songs and dances are interspersed throughout a unifying play and performed by the actors.^[2]

A British production titled The Black Crook, which opened at the Alhambra Theatre in London on December 23, 1872, was an opera bouffe with a new story based on some of the French source material that influenced the New York version, with new music by Frederic Clay and Georges Jacobi. A silent film version of The Black Crook was produced in 1916.