It is always Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun, Sondheim's Funny Thing, Herman's Hello Dolly and on and on.
Same for opera, which was, of course, around long before the American musical. Even in the case of librettists who did make a name for themselves (Da Ponte, Boito, etc), we still generally refer to Mozart's Don Giovanni, Verdi's Otello, etc.
It's also interesting to see how some composer-lyricist teams are referred to. Typically the composer's name comes first - but then you have "backwards" teams like Maltby and Shire, or Aherns and Flaherty. Or, of course, Gilbert and Sullivan.
Of course, in some cases of revivals/films etc, the bookwriter issue gets even tougher because each version gets rewritten. As to your mention of Annie Get Your Gun above - is that Berlin/Fields/Fields, or Berlin/Sheldon (the film), or Berlin/Stone? (Let alone that Berlin/Fields/Fields has both a 1946 and very different 1966 version...) |
