Though it ran over 14 months on Broadway in 1970-72, The Rothschilds, Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick's final musical, suffered in comparison to the team's longest running show, Fiddler On The Roof. The comparison was inescapable: Fiddler was about a poor Jewish-Russian milkman of the early 20th century and his five daughters; The Rothschilds was about a rich Jewish-German banker of the late 18th and early 19th centuries and his five sons. But whereas the former was a sentimental tragedy depicting the destruction of ...
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Though it ran over 14 months on Broadway in 1970-72, The Rothschilds, Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick's final musical, suffered in comparison to the team's longest running show, Fiddler On The Roof. The comparison was inescapable: Fiddler was about a poor Jewish-Russian milkman of the early 20th century and his five daughters; The Rothschilds was about a rich Jewish-German banker of the late 18th and early 19th centuries and his five sons. But whereas the former was a sentimental tragedy depicting the destruction of tradition through the marriages of the daughters, the latter was a story of historical triumph depicting the rise of the most successful Jewish family in European history. If The Rothschilds had an inspiring tale to tell, it was also one that was emotionally less involving, a problem exacerbated by a structural difficulty: In an attempt to inject feeling into the show, much of the second act was given over to a romantic sub-plot involving one of the sons that only distracted attention from...
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