These notes survey musical theatre as its own historical tradition rather than as a side branch of opera or popular song. The course begins with minstrelsy, vaudeville, and operetta, then moves through Tin Pan Alley, Show Boat, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Bernstein, Sondheim, rock musicals, megamusicals, Disney, and Hamilton before turning to the rise of contemporary Mandarin musical theatre.

Along the way, the course treats the musical as a hybrid form where song, dialogue, dance, commerce, and stagecraft constantly reshape one another. The notes also build a comparative framework for understanding how musicals differ from opera and pop music while tracing how Broadway aesthetics travel across media and across cultures.