Attend, o Muse, Our Holy Dances and Come to Rejoice in Our Songs : The Reception of Aristophanes in the Modern Musical Theater

Music played an important role in the performances of Greek Old Comedy. What is the best way to perform an ancient play so that music, far from being an unnecessary supplement, can give its fundamental contribution to the success of the show? The answer is: opera (or one of its by-products: operettes and musicals). Through the inspection of one single example of these musical forms (Braunfels' Die Vögel, Lecocq's Plutus and Sondheim' Frogs) and the analysis of some different examples in the case of a single play (Lysistrata), this paper will show the many differents ways musicians, together with their librettists, have worked on an ancient text so as to make it both charming and comprehensible to a modern audience.