[Tenniel2]

Oh, it gets better. That song opens the show, and those lines open the first verse. So the very first human utterance that the Broadway audience heard after the curtain went up -- this in December 1927 -- was "n*gg*rs," twice in rapid succession and with the full emphasis of the downbeat:

DEE-da-da dee da-da dee-dee-DEEE-dee,
DEE-da-da dee da-da dee-dee-DEEEEE ...

Despite this sign that the evening might not be the frothy mindless musical romp they were expecting, the opening-night theatergoers did not walk out in protest. They left quietly (Jerome Kern hadn't written any exit music, and he and Hammerstein agreed that there would be no curtain calls), and then woke up to reviews confirming the arrival of a most palpable hit. It's a critical axiom now that American musical theater can be divided into two eras: pre-Show Boat and post-Show Boat.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

And the next major change also involved Hammerstein, with Richard Rodgers, with Oklahoma. The next was Sondheim and Bernstein's West Side Story.