Tevye first appeared in a series of stories in the 1890's and in a 1905 Warsaw production written by Sholem-Aleichem, the pen name of Sholem Rabinowitz, from Kiev. Rabinowitz was a pioneer of the use of Yiddish, the language of the shtetl. It was the Yiddish theater in NY that brought him to America a year later. And in 1919, a few years after his death, the work of Sholem-Aleichem triumphed in America in 'Tevye der milkhiker'. The play became a worldwide favorite, was actually performed in NY in 1939 by a traveling Soviet company and was made into a movie the same year. After the war, an English play 'The World of Sholem-Aleichem' brought Tevye to a wider audience and in 1957 'Tevye and his Daughters' was produced in NY. The three men who put Fiddler together were Jerry Bock, Sheldon Harnick and Joseph Stein. Jerome Robbins was brought in as director, Zero Mostel signed on as Tevye. Jerome Robbins is the hero of the story as he masterminded endless changes and adjustments to make it the Fiddler we know and love. Previewed in Detroit and Washington, the show premiered in NY on Sept. 22, 1964 and has been a worldwide phenom ever since. The movie came out in 1971 and to this day, Fiddler remains a revered and oft-produced staple of the live theater, here and around the world.
This is a very well-done, thoughtful and serious book that delved into the topic in much greater detail than I did. There is background information on Sholem-Aleeichem and the eastern European world that produced him and Tevye. The world of NY theater for the fifty years that preceded Fiddler is thoroughly explored, as is the role of Fiddler in Jewish culture. After-all, these are folktales that morphed into the theater of the new world at a time when America's Jews became completely mainstream, then became part of American culture and by now have re-impacted 21st century Judaism. Of course, I am listening to the Broadway album (and let's acknowledge that it's as good as it gets) as I type.
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