Will you forever sleep

Last year (2012) James Fraser (on vocals) and I recorded a song from one of my musicals-in-progress for halloween.

You can isten to this recording on soundcloud.

This song is from the opening scene for the musical, Wake not the dead (a working title). It is a horror musical, based on the work with the same title by Johann Ludwig Tieck.

The first scene in act 1 starts with Walter bemoaning the death of his childhood lover. Brunhilda has been dead for about ten years. After her death, Walter married Swanhilda, with whom he has two wonderful little kiddies, but Walter is not happily married. Every night, he is crying and moaning next to the grave of Brunhilda.

We will not yet give the whole story away. For a teaser, you can find the original story by using google. What I can tell you now, is that this stage play will scare the wits out of most. For our musical, many small changes will be made to the plot to keep it more interesting.

The idea of horror musicals is nothing new. Probably the most famous one is Richard O'Brien's Rocky horror picture show, which became much more than just a cult classic. More recently, Stephen Sondheim had a huge success with Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Both these musicals have really, really great scores to carry them. While Rocky Horror is a hit for its bizare and amusing, Sweeney Todd is mixed with a fair amount of humor, as illustrated in the great performance of Angela Lansbury and George Hearn in the clip below.

 

Off course, Phantom of the opera can also be regarded as a horror, but most fans will rather put it in the drame / romance bin. I am sure you will be able to name many, many more, like e.g. Dracula that made it to the Broadway stages, and probably a few thousand more lurking in theaters all over. Then there are some more direct-to-movie horrors, like Hard rock zombies. Some would put Mama Mia also in this group, but now we are just confusing horror musicals with horrible musicals.