ミュージカル『キャバレー』における歌の機能について

抄録

Set in Berlin at the rise of the Nazi party, the Broadway musical Cabaret (1966) portrays the relationship between American writer Cliff and English cabaret girl Sally, but the defining characteristic of the musical is its use of cabaret scenes presented by a character known as the Emcee that are interspersed throughout the story. The role of the Emcee opened the way for the more experimental musicals of the 1970s. Cabaret was also innovative in that it dealt with the Nazis, a challenging subject for musicals in the 1960s. However, approaches to Cabaret that focus on background or theme cannot fully account for the function of its musical numbers. This paper offers an analysis of their function from a structural viewpoint.

In view of the distinctiveness of the Emcee as a character, the musical numbers in Cabaret can be divided into three levels: plot numbers derived from characters' conversations or emotions, show numbers sung in a conventional show-in-show style, and numbers by the Emcee, who sometimes criticizes the events of the story from without. A view of how the musical numbers in Cabaret operate at these three levels reveals that both integrated plot numbers and entertaining show numbers function not only to express or emphasize the emotions, conditions, and decisions of the characters, but also to control them.