Wicked
The witch's melody becomes a love song, and a song that soars into the sky. Dressing just a few themes in new clothes, this score follows the friendship of two girls to the very end.
At a glance 🔭💭
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The creators ⏳🌊
- ComposerStephen Schwartz
He wrote the music and lyrics, and launched the project by securing the stage rights to the novel himself.
- BookWinnie Holzman
With Schwartz she reshaped the plot, placing the friendship of the two witches at the heart of the story.
- DirectorJoe Mantello
He directed the staging from the San Francisco tryout through the Broadway premiere.
- ProducerMarc Platt
A former Universal producer, he took on the production with David Stone at Schwartz's request.
- LeadIdina Menzel
Originated the role of Elphaba and won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for it.
- LeadKristin Chenoweth
Originated the role of Glinda, setting the standard for the part with her high soprano and comic acting.
I. Oz turned upside down
(Source) “Wicked” began as a novel Gregory Maguire published in 1995. It gave the Wicked Witch of the West, who in “The Wizard of Oz” is only ever a villain, a name, Elphaba, and a childhood, and told of her school days alongside Glinda the Good Witch. The film rights to the novel were initially held by Universal Pictures. (Origins) Stephen Schwartz read the novel while on vacation and wanted to bring it to the stage. In 1998 he persuaded Maguire to grant him the stage rights, and by earnest pleading drew Universal producer Marc Platt into the project. Platt became a producer alongside David Stone. (Composer) Schwartz had made his name on Broadway at twenty-three with “Godspell,” and the following year with “Pippin.” After that he worked in film, winning Academy Awards for Disney's “Pocahontas” and DreamWorks' “The Prince of Egypt.” “Wicked” marked his return to Broadway after a long absence. He wrote both the music and the lyrics, and decided himself what to keep from the novel and what to cut. (Adaptation) The book was written by television writer Winnie Holzman. The two spent nearly a year shaping the plot, paring away much of the novel's dark, tangled politics and placing the friendship of Elphaba and Glinda at the heart of the story instead. Joe Mantello directed, William David Brohn did the orchestrations, and Stephen Oremus served as music director. (Tryout) The tryout in San Francisco in the summer of 2003 drew mixed reviews. The creative team spent three months reworking the show. They wrote a new entrance song for Fiyero and expanded Elphaba's role. On October 30 of that year the curtain officially rose at the Gershwin Theatre in New York.
II. No One Mourns the Wicked
(Overture) As the curtain rises, the music sounds first like a warning. A short melody emerges, weightily stated by the brass: this is Elphaba's theme. Threading through it passes a brief motif that stands for Elphaba's power. The audience does not know it yet, but these two ideas will carry the next two hours. (Celebration) In the opening scene the citizens of Oz rejoice at the news that the Wicked Witch of the West is dead. The chorus is bright and giddy, but dark harmonies are lodged throughout the melody, so the celebration never sounds entirely innocent. Here the crowd asks and Glinda answers, and the story travels back into the past. The whole show is wrapped in this frame of recollection. (Arrival) The scene shifts to Shiz University. A short chorus modeled on a school hymn paints the place as solemn and old-fashioned. Elphaba, whose skin is green, is a spectacle here from the very start, and she is on edge from shielding her disabled younger sister, Nessarose. (Dream) Elphaba's first solo pictures the day she will meet the Wizard. It begins cautiously, almost spoken, but as the dream grows the vocal line climbs higher and the accompaniment thickens. It is the moment a child who grew up lonely first comes to believe she might be of real use. Schwartz originally wrote a different song for this spot before replacing it with the present one, to show more clearly what Elphaba wants.
The curtain rises on a celebration of the witch's death. The material in this number is reused throughout the whole show.
- The melody the brass state so heavily at the start of the overture is Elphaba's theme. Schwartz has said that its chord progression came out of his work on “The Survival of St. Joan,” a 1971 rock opera for which he served as music director.
- The seven notes that flicker past in the middle are a leitmotif (a short recurring melody tied to a character or idea) for Elphaba's power. Schwartz has said these first seven notes match the opening phrase of “Over the Rainbow.” The quotation is understood as an homage to Harold Arlen, composer of the 1939 film.
- The citizens' chorus bubbles along in a bright major key, but dark harmonies keep slipping in. The ear senses before anything else that something lies hidden in the festivities.
- This chorus returns at the start of Act II and in the final scene. Fix it in your ear on first hearing, and at the end you will notice how differently the same melody sounds.
The song in which Elphaba, an outsider, dares to dream big for the first time. Here we learn what she wants.
- Follow the way it begins like speech and gradually becomes song. Talking to herself turns into a dream, and the dream turns into conviction.
- Toward the end the range climbs and the orchestra thickens. As Elphaba's imagination swells, so does the sound.
- Originally a different song, “Making Good,” stood in this spot. It was replaced during development, and the old song was included as a bonus track on the fifth-anniversary album.
- The dream Elphaba pictures in this song is turned completely on its head in the last number of Act I. Hear the two back to back, and it becomes clear how she has changed.
III. Roommates
(Loathing) By chance, Elphaba and Glinda end up sharing a room. The duet in which they confess how much they detest each other is, in form, a love song. It borrows the very idiom of lovers smitten at first sight confessing their excitement, and uses it to sing the opposite feeling. The students' chorus chimes in, and the laughter only grows. (Foreboding) Behind that bright commotion comes a short, low song. It is the scene in which Doctor Dillamond, the goat professor, raises rumors that the Animals are losing their power of speech. This brief passage first reveals the show's political thread. (Popularity) With Fiyero's arrival the school turns into a party. His song sets a carefree, live-for-fun attitude to a jaunty rhythm. In the same scene Glinda gives Elphaba a ridiculous hat, and the prank is shadowed, mockingly, by Elphaba's theme. When Elphaba puts on the hat at the party and dances alone, Glinda goes over and dances with her. It is the moment their relationship begins to change. (Makeover) Having opened her heart, Glinda sets out to make Elphaba popular. The solo that follows is the funniest song in the show. Glinda's vanity and her kindness live together in a single number. (Resignation) The short song Elphaba then sings alone is quiet. She loves Fiyero, but folds the feeling away, telling herself that place is not hers. With almost no accompaniment, only her voice remains.
Glinda's solo as she sets out to make Elphaba popular. Real affection is mixed into the laughs.
- Song and dialogue trade off constantly. Glinda's breathless, self-delighted chatter becomes the rhythm.
- The original Glinda, Kristin Chenoweth, brought together an opera-trained high soprano and comic acting. Actors who have taken on the role since treat her interpretation as a kind of benchmark.
- The light, bouncy accompaniment mirrors Glinda's surface. Yet by the song's end it comes through that she truly cares for Elphaba.
- In the 2024 film, Ariana Grande sang this number. Her path around the dorm room ranges far wider than in the stage version.
IV. In the Emerald City
(Journey) At last Elphaba travels to the Emerald City to meet the Wizard, and Glinda goes with her. The song they sing while touring the city is as splashy as a picture postcard. Chorus and dance fill the stage; it is the moment in Act I when the two are closest. (The Wizard) The Wizard appears from behind an imposing mechanical head. His short song is in the manner of old vaudeville (a variety show mixing song, dance and comic patter), and he sounds like a down-to-earth, kindly uncle. But this homespun manner is hiding something. Elphaba soon learns what the man she looked up to has been concealing. (Choice) There, Elphaba has only two paths open to her. Comply and be accepted, or turn her back and become a fugitive. Glinda, in the end, cannot take the hand held out to her. The music draws out at length this moment when the two go separate ways. (Flight) Act I ends with Elphaba soaring alone into the sky. This final number unfolds at full scale, for the first time, the power motif heard only in passing in the overture. The tempo quickens and the notes climb ever higher. By the song's end Elphaba has let go of what she first wanted and seized something new. She sets aside a usefulness that depends on others' approval and chooses a freedom of her own making. (Intermission) Heading into intermission, the audience realizes that Elphaba has come to look just like the Wicked Witch of the West in “The Wizard of Oz.” Act II shows how that witch came to bear the name.
The Act I finale, in which Elphaba turns her back on the Wizard and flies off alone. The whole show has been building toward this number.
- The power motif that flickered past in the overture unfolds here at full size for the first time. It is the moment a short fragment is at last completed as a melody.
- The opening is a conversational duet with Glinda. Listen as Elphaba is gradually left alone and the notes climb higher and higher.
- On the final high note, Elphaba rises above the stage. Idina Menzel won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for this role.
- In the 2024 film, Cynthia Erivo reportedly sang this song live on set. Rather than a sound recorded separately in the studio, it keeps the breath and tension of the set intact.
V. No Good Deed
(Celebration) Act II opens by returning to the festive chorus of Act I's first scene. This time it is Glinda who stands at center stage. She is revered by the people of Oz as the Good Witch and fêted for her engagement. Outwardly she sings of happiness, but in the asides in between, her smile wavers bit by bit. She herself does not know why, having everything she wanted, she is not glad. (Temptation) The Wizard holds out his hand to Elphaba once more. Again it is a vaudeville-style number. He lays out his worldly wisdom, that people believe what they want to believe rather than the truth, like a lightly shuffling soft-shoe. The sweeter the melody, the more cynical the words inside it sound. (Love) The duet for Elphaba and Fiyero is almost the only love duet in the show. Yet its melody reworks Elphaba's theme, which the brass sounded so menacingly in the overture. Only the instruments and harmonies change, and the same material becomes a tender love song. (Collapse) Hunted, Elphaba finally breaks. Having lost the people dear to her one by one, she is left alone, and the song she sings is the rawest in the show. Incantation and anguished cries tangle together, and out pours the realization that everything she did in good faith has turned back against her. It is the moment Elphaba decides to become the witch people say she is. (Hunt) Soon the crowd takes up torches for a witch hunt. The march rhythm turns the giddy energy of the opening scene's festive chorus into rage.
A solo in which Elphaba, having lost everything, resolves to become the witch people say she is. It is the point where Act II climbs highest.
- At the start, the same words are repeated as if chanting a spell. It sounds less like singing than a struggle to hold on to something.
- Elphaba's power motif returns, this time in a twisted form. Material that stood for freedom in Act I now sounds out in the depths of despair.
- The accompaniment lashes forward, and Elphaba cries out in her high register. Rather than being sung beautifully, the song chooses to show her coming apart, just as it is.
- As soon as the song ends, the witch-hunt march follows. Listen on through the passage where Elphaba's private despair passes into the fury of the crowd.
VI. The two meet again
(Reunion) As everything draws to a close, Elphaba and Glinda face each other once more. Their final duet holds no reconciliation, no confession of love, no promise of salvation. They simply acknowledge, quietly, that knowing each other has changed them. One takes a phrase and the other answers, until at the end the two voices overlap. Rather than singing one melody together, each lays her own line over the other's, so you can hear in the sound itself that the two remain different people to the very end. (Finale) The finale returns to the work's opening scene. The melody of the celebration chorus is heard again, with fragments of the final duet layered over it. It is the same music, yet it sounds nothing like it did at the start, because the audience now knows what that celebration conceals. I won't reveal here what the final scene shows. I'll say only that in it the music tells the truth before the dialogue does, and that one of the characters never learns it. (Structure) Because the overture and the finale are woven from the same material, the work comes full circle and closes where it began. Each time Elphaba's theme, the power motif and the celebration chorus change places, their meaning changes too. Like “Matilda,” it is a novel brought to the stage, and it too centers on a girl with extraordinary powers, but the weight of “Wicked” lies less in one person's growth than in the bond between two. (Afterward) In 2024 and 2025 the work was remade as two films directed by Jon M. Chu. After the films came out, the 2003 cast album reached a new peak on the Billboard album chart.
Elphaba and Glinda's final duet. Quietly, they confess how knowing each other has changed them.
- It opens as an exchange, one singing and the other answering. At the end the two melodies overlap, and instead of singing the same notes, two different lines form a harmony.
- The accompaniment stays restrained to the very end. Instead of volume, the two voices carry the song.
- The song's melody returns in the finale, layered over the celebration chorus. As the work comes back to where it began and closes, friendship becomes the last sound left standing.
- The film “Wicked: For Good,” which adapts Act II of the stage show, takes its title from this song. Unlike the stage version, the film's second part adds two newly written songs.
Lesser-known stories
Elphaba's theme was not a melody first written for “Wicked.” Schwartz has said the chord progression came out of his work on the 1971 rock opera “The Survival of St. Joan,” for which he served as music director. That show never became widely known, and only more than 30 years later was its material reborn as the sound of the Wicked Witch of the West. Because its source was a show that closed quickly, most audiences have no idea. Few listeners notice, either, that the seven notes signifying Elphaba's power match the opening of “Over the Rainbow.” The rhythm and harmony are different, so the resemblance doesn't easily catch the ear. The quotation is understood as a tribute to Harold Arlen, composer of the 1939 film. Two works depicting the same Oz are, in effect, linked by seven notes. Maguire invented the name Elphaba. It strings together the sounds of the initials L, F, B of L. Frank Baum, author of the original “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.” Because it is never explained onstage, it is known only among readers of the novel. The official cast album leaves out one Act II number: the Wicked Witch of the East scene sung by Nessarose, Elphaba and Boq. The producers omitted it, judging that it was hard to arrange for the recording and gave away too much of the plot. So those who know only the album miss this passage. It is the rare scene in which the power motif leaves its usual minor mode and sounds in major.
Glossary 📚🔎
Leitmotif (leading motive)
(Word origin) The German Leitmotiv means a leading (leit) motive (Motiv). The name itself holds the idea of a short melodic fragment leading the listener to a particular character or idea in the story. (In film·musical scores) A short melody that recurs whenever a particular character, object or emotion appears. In “Wicked,” Elphaba's theme and the seven notes signifying her power are the prime examples. When the melody sounds, the audience thinks of that character even when she is not onstage. It is like a game in which the same music always plays just before the boss appears, so you know what's coming without looking at the screen.
Overture (opening piece)
(Word origin) The Korean seogok (序曲, 'opening piece') means the piece (曲) that comes at the very head of the order (序). The English overture comes from an Old French word meaning to open. It is music that opens the curtain. (In film·musical scores) Music played by the orchestra alone, before the curtain rises or just after. It offers brief previews of the melodies of songs to come. It is like skimming the table of contents before reading a book. Just as the contents let you guess what the story holds, the overture lets your ears know first which songs are coming. (Elsewhere) In everyday English, overture also means making the first move toward negotiation or reconciliation.
Reprise
(Word origin) The English reprise comes from the French reprendre, meaning to take up again. (In film·musical scores) The return of an earlier song at another point in the show. It is usually shorter, and the lyrics or mood often change. Even when the same melody comes back, its meaning differs because the story has moved on in between. The opening of Act II and the finale of “Wicked” are examples. It is like greeting a friend on graduation day with the very words you used at the start of the school year, and finding that the same words sound completely different.
Act I finale
(Word origin) Finale is Italian for 'end.' It comes from the Latin finis (end). (In film·musical scores) In a two-act musical, the big number that closes Act I. It is where a character makes a decisive choice or a major event erupts, leaving the audience wondering about Act II all through the intermission. In “Wicked,” “Defying Gravity” holds this spot. The effect is like a TV drama episode ending on its most suspenseful scene so that you can't wait for the next one. (Elsewhere) In sports broadcasting, the last game of a season or tournament is sometimes also called the finale.
Orchestration (orchestral arrangement)
(Word origin) The Korean gwanhyeonak (管絃樂, 'pipe-and-string music') means music played together by wind (管) and string (絃) instruments. Gwan means a pipe, and hyeon a string. (In film·musical scores) The work of deciding which instruments will play the melodies and harmonies the composer has written, and how they will share them. The same melody sounds menacing when the brass blares it and tender when the strings bow it softly. That is why, in “Wicked,” Elphaba's theme sounds like a warning in the overture and gentle in the Act II love duet. Just as the same ingredients can become fried rice or porridge, the ingredients may be identical, but the flavor changes entirely depending on how they are cooked.
Tryout (trial performance)
(Word origin) The English try out means to do something on a trial basis. (In film·musical scores) Staging a musical in another city before bringing it to Broadway. Songs are changed and scenes reworked in light of audience reactions and critics' reviews. After its San Francisco tryout, “Wicked” got a newly written entrance song for Fiyero and gave Elphaba a larger role. It is like performing for your classmates before the school show and fixing the parts that fell flat. (Elsewhere) In sports, a tryout is an open selection test in which players' skills are assessed firsthand.
Cast album
(In film·musical scores) A recording on which a musical's performers sing its songs just as they are performed onstage. Because an original cast album preserves the voices of the actors who first took the stage, it is regarded as the definitive recording of the work. The Broadway cast album of “Wicked” was recorded in November 2003 and won the 2005 Grammy Award for Best Musical Show Album. It is like filming your class's recital: years later, even if another class puts on the same play, your class's video remains the first version.