Florence Welch To Create Great Gatsby Music For Broadway Show

It has been announced that Florence Welch (Florence + The Machine) will be penning songs and music for an upcoming Broadway Musical of the classic book The Great Gatsby.

The Great Gatsby Show – what we know so far

The announcement from Welch explained how she felt drawn to the project, saying:

“Musicals were my first love, and I feel a deep connection to Fitzgerald’s broken romanticism. This book has haunted me for a large part of my life. It contains some of my favourite lines in literature. It is an honour to have been offered the chance to recreate this book in song.”

Florence had previously written and performed the song Over The Love for the 2013 film adaptation of The Great Gatsby.

The public domain

Though literature and Arts fans may remember the 2013 film that was made famous by Baz Luhrmann starring Leonardo DiCaprio, it is likely that this new musical adaptation may not be the only one to come in the near future. The Great Gatsby novel has been in the public domain since the new year, as copyright laws protect works for a total of 95 years following their initial publication. This means that a host of classic works are able to be reproduced when their copyright expires.

Works that have become public domain in 2021 include:

Books

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway
The Trial (in German) by Franz Kafka
An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos
The New Negro edited by Alain Locke (collecting works from writers including W.E.B. du Bois, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay, Jean Toomer and Eric Walrond)
Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis
The Secret of Chimneys by Agatha Christie
Those Barren Leaves by Aldous Huxley
The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham
On the Trail of Negro Folk-Songs by Dorothy Scarborough
The Writing of Fiction by Edith Wharton
A Daughter of the Samurai by Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto

Films

Harold Lloyd’s The Freshman
The Merry Widow
Stella Dallas
Buster Keaton’s Go West
His People
Lovers in Quarantine
Pretty Ladies
The Unholy Three

Music

“Always,” by Irving Berlin
“Sweet Georgia Brown,” by Ben Bernie, Maceo Pinkard and Kenneth Casey
Works by Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, the “Mother of the Blues,” including “Army Camp Harmony Blues” (with Hooks Tilford) and “Shave ‘Em Dry” (with William Jackson)
“Looking for a Boy,” by George and Ira Gershwin (from the musical Tip-Toes)
“Manhattan,” by Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers
“Ukulele Lady,” by Gus Kahn and Richard Whiting
“Yes Sir, That’s My Baby,” by Gus Kahn and Walter Donaldson
Works by “Jelly Roll” Morton, including “Shreveport Stomp” and “Milenberg Joys” (with Paul Mares, Walter Melrose and Leon Roppolo)
Works by W.C. Handy, including “Friendless Blues” (with Mercedes Gilbert), “Bright Star of Hope” (with Lillian A. Thorsten) and “When the Black Man Has a Nation of His Own” (with J.M. Miller)
Works by Duke Ellington, including “Jig Walk” and “With You” (both with Joseph “Jo” Trent)
Works by “Fats” Waller, including “Anybody Here Want To Try My Cabbage” (with Andy Razaf), “Ball and Chain Blues” (with Andy Razaf), and “Campmeetin’ Stomp”

You can find an exhaustive list of works here.

Although there are no release dates for the new musical adaptation of The Great Gatsby, it is rumoured by the BBC that the show will premiere in New York off-Broadway, then move to Broadway, and is to be directed by Rebecca Frecknall, who is the Associate Director of the Almeida Theatre in London.

Welch is said to be writing lyrics with her bandmates, and also collaborating with Thomas Bartlett on the music. If the 2013 film adaptation is anything to go by, we certainly can’t wait to hear the new offerings from Florence and the team for a new interpretation of this much-loved classic.

Also by Michelle Sciarrotta: