(Walter Kerr described it a year later in a Saturday Evening Post article on the theatre, saying that “the rhythmic hand-clapping which greeted the finale of The Music Man on opening night was the only time I have ever felt a single irresistible impulse sweep over an entire audience and stir it to a demonstration that could not possibly have been inhibited.”) That’s when the audience burst into spontaneous rhythmic applause as though cued to do so-as it has happened with every audience from that day forward. The piano started “Seventy-Six Trombones.” Out came the dancers playing their pantomime trombones, swinging cross that stage as proud as you’ll ever wanta see anybody be. Recalling the industry run-through of The Music Man, the show’s creator Meredith Willson noted that curtain call as particularly memorable, a sign of good things to come for his masterpiece: This ultimate, non-diegetic musical moment stamps indelibly the fate of some shows. And, in many musicals, the orchestra accompanies this whole sequence.

For the curtain rises again lights come back on actors pose for their bows. But not end of production, nor end of performance. In the American musical theatre, a final chord sounds in the orchestra. To begin at the end: actors land in a tableau lights fade curtain falls. The Journal of American Drama and Theatre

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