The Evolution of Modern Musicals in Contemporary Culture

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-551-5_135How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Modern Musicals; Cultural Evolution; Innovation in Form and Theme

Abstract

This article will explore the development that has taken place in the modern musicals by focusing on how their music forms, contents, selection criteria and social meanings have evolved alongside contemporary culture. It will mainly focus on four representative musicals, “Jesus Christ Superstar”, “The Phantom of the Opera”, “Hamilton” and “SIX”, by providing the basic information about these plays such as their creation background and storyline, their innovation in the form of the performance and music, explore the deeper meaning of their themes, analyzing their breakthrough in the traditional form of musicals and their significance to the contemporary musical industry. In this way, it will presents the changes that had been made to the modern musicals and the reasons of such changes, explore how this art form gained widespread popularity among contemporary people, as well as how these changes in musicals reflect the shifts in contemporary people’s preferences and the evolution of their thoughts.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Duo Zhu
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/03/26
TI  - The Evolution of Modern Musicals in Contemporary Culture
BT  - Proceeding of 2025 8th International Conference on Humanities Education and Social Sciences (ICHESS 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 1243
EP  - 1248
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-551-5_135
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-551-5_135
ID  - Zhu2026
ER  -