Low male voice repertoire in contemporary musical theatre: a studio and performance guide of selected songs 1996-2020 by

Chapter 7:
 
DISNEY
 
THEATRICAL
 
AND
 
THE
 
ANIMATED
 
MUSICAL 
The 1990s heralded in a new type of production first created by Disney Theatricals. Corporate 
musicals are a “genre of shows conceived, produced, and managed by multifunctional entertainment 
corporations”. Corporate musicals can be “efficiently reproduced for foreign or touring productions with 
matching sets and anonymous casts”. Disney’s smash financial successes of a staged Beauty and the 
Beast (1994) was followed by The Lion King (1997).
1
Tarzan (2006), Mary Poppins (2006), The Little 
Mermaid (2008), Aladdin (2014) and Frozen (2018) also made it to the Broadway stage with varying 
degrees of market success.
2
Other producing teams took inspiration from films by 20
th
Century Fox and 
DreamWorks Animation and launched shows such as Shrek The Musical (2008), Anastasia (2017) and 
The Prince of Egypt (2020). Many of the original films feature an antagonist or father figure whose 
music lies in the same range as songs for low baritones or basses during the Golden Age of musical 
theatre. The film or production recordings showcase a depth and fullness of timbre not seen as frequently 
in the rock/pop musicals of the same era. Other animated films feature similar characters and vocalisms, 
and thus can be used as audition material for these works produced on stage. The following analysis 
showcases selections from two Disney films, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and The Princess and the 
Frog. The former has a stage adaptation licensed through Music Theatre International, but never made it 
to Broadway. 
1
John Kenrick, Musical Theatre, 2
nd
ed. (New York: K.S. Giniger Company, 2017), 293-294. 
2
Amy Osatinski, Disney Theatrical Productions (New York: Routledge, 2019), 189-192. 

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60 
Table 7.1. “Hellfire”