Musical theatre is traced back all the way to ancient Greece when they started to combine music and dance to their on stage comedies. At first parts of Europe only songs in their musical performances and these were called opera but as time went on composers started to experiment with different styles. Around the 1850 a French composer named Herve came up with comic musical theatre called operetta. The adaption of these were called musical burlesques which became really big in London in the 1870s. These are very different to musicals today as today musicals contain more popular music. There is also more spoken dialogue in modern musicals then operettas. They also try attract musicals to younger people by creating musicals with more modern music like rap a good example of this is the new musical Hamilton this musical contain loads of rap particularly in the song guns and ships. There are musicals set in loads of different places. It can go from Paris in France all the way to Chicago in America. So musical theatre is full of song, dance and geography

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