Fiddler on the Roof Music by Jerry Bock; Lyrics by Sheldon Harnick; Book by Joseph Stein Premiere: Imperial Theatre, New York City, September 22, 1964
One of the most beloved shows of all time and the first Broadway musical to play more than 3000 performances, Fiddler on the Roof is a heart-warming celebration of love, marriage, sacrifice, duty, and tradition. It remains to this day, throughout the world, one of the most frequently performed American musicals and is a triumph of warmth, tenderness, and sentimentality over the spectacle and extravagances that characterize so much of current musical theatre.
The plot deals with the breakdown of traditional Jewish life in early 20th-century Russia—a breakdown caused from within by a younger generation unwilling to accept the laws of its ancestors, and from the outside by jealousy, greed, and hatred. Tevye, a milkman in the village of Anatevka, has raised five daughters with the aid of his wife Golde and quotations from the Good Book, most invented by him. One by one, and each in a way breaking with tradition, his three eldest daughters—Tzeitel, Hodel, and Chava—ask for their father's blessing in their choices of husbands. Torn between tradition and love of family, Tevye agrees to the first, is given no choice in the second, and refuses the third. Word reaches Anatevka, as it had already for numerous other villages, that all Jews must leave. As Tevye, Golde, and the villagers begin their long trek to new lives in new countries, the resolute milkman beckons to a lone fiddler on the roof to follow—wherever life may take them, the fiddler and all that he stands for will be with them.
From the opening chorus, "Tradition," to the sisters' dream for ideal husbands, "Matchmaker, matchmaker," to Tevye's reverent plea to God for a little financial relief, "If I were a rich man," to "Sunrise, sunset" as Tevye and Golde watch sentimentally as their first daughter marries, the musical score—from first note to last—meshes seamlessly with the heartfelt drama.
