Fiddler on the Roof

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Lore & Background

Fiddler on the Roof is based on a series of stories by Sholem Aleichem about his character Tevye the Dairyman, which he wrote in Yiddish between 1894 and 1914 about Jewish life in a village in the Pale of Settlement of Imperial Russia at the turn of the 20th century. The stories are based on Aleichem's own upbringing near Kyiv (fictionalized as Yehupetz). It is also influenced by Life is with People, by Mark Zborowski and Elizabeth Herzog. Aleichem wrote a dramatic adaptation of the stories that he left unfinished at his death, but which was produced in Yiddish in 1919 by the Yiddish Art Theater and made into a film in the 1930s. In the late 1950s, a musical based on the stories, called Tevye and his Daughters, was produced off-Broadway by Arnold Perl. Rodgers and Hammerstein and then Mike Todd briefly considered bringing this musical to Broadway but dropped the idea. Harold Prince replaced the original producer Fred Coe and brought in director/choreographer Jerome Robbins. The writers and Robbins considered naming the musical Tevye, before landing on a title suggested by various paintings by Marc Chagall (Green Violinist (1924), Le Mort (1924), The Fiddler (1912)) that also inspired the original set design. Contrary to popular belief, the "title of the musical does not refer to any specific painting".

Reader's Guide

The original Broadway production of the show, which opened in 1964, had the first musical theatre run in history to surpass 3,000 performances. Fiddler held the record for the longest-running Broadway musical for almost 10 years until Grease surpassed its run. The production was extraordinarily profitable and highly acclaimed. It won nine Tony Awards, including best musical, score, book, direction and choreography. It spawned five Broadway revivals and a highly successful 1971 film adaptation and has enjoyed enduring international popularity. It has also been a popular choice for school and community productions. Investors and some in the media worried that Fiddler on the Roof might be considered "too Jewish" to attract mainstream audiences. Other critics considered that it was too culturally sanitized, "middlebrow" and superficial; Philip Roth, writing in The New Yorker, called it shtetl kitsch. The show found the right balance for its time, even if not entirely authentic, to become "one of the first popular post-Holocaust depictions of the vanished world of Eastern European Jewry".

Did You Know?

• The title was suggested by various paintings by Marc Chagall, including Green Violinist (1924), Le Mort (1924), and The Fiddler (1912), but contrary to popular belief, the title does not refer to any specific painting.
• During rehearsals, Jewish actor Zero Mostel feuded with director/choreographer Jerome Robbins because Robbins had cooperated with the House Un-American Activities Committee and hid his Jewish heritage from the public.
• Sholem Aleichem's original stories ended with Tevye alone, his wife dead and his daughters scattered; at the end of Fiddler, the family members are alive, and most are emigrating together to America.
• The original Broadway production opened in 1964 and was the first musical theatre run in history to surpass 3,000 performances.
• The musical was influenced by the book Life is with People, by Mark Zborowski and Elizabeth Herzog.