<P> Fiddler on the Roof is a musical with music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, and book by Joseph Stein, set in the Pale of Settlement of Imperial Russia in 1905 . It is based on Tevye and his Daughters (or Tevye the Dairyman) and other tales by Sholem Aleichem . The story centers on Tevye, the father of five daughters, and his attempts to maintain his Jewish religious and cultural traditions as outside influences encroach upon the family's lives . He must cope both with the strong - willed actions of his three older daughters, who wish to marry for love--each one's choice of a husband moves further away from the customs of his faith--and with the edict of the Tsar that evicts the Jews from their village . </P> <P> 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 . It remains the sixteenth longest - running show in Broadway history . 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 . </P> <P> Fiddler on the Roof is based on Tevye and his Daughters (or Tevye the Dairyman), a series of stories by Sholem Aleichem that 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 . 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 . </P> <P> 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 . For example, it portrays the local Russian officer as sympathetic, instead of brutal and cruel, as Sholom Aleichem had described him . Aleichem's 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 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". 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 that also inspired the original set design . Contrary to popular belief, the "title of the musical does not refer to any specific painting". During rehearsals, one of the stars, Jewish actor Zero Mostel, feuded with Robbins, whom he held in contempt because Robbins had testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee and hid his Jewish heritage from the public . Other cast members also had run - ins with Robbins, who reportedly "abused the cast, drove the designers crazy (and) strained the good nature of Hal Prince". </P>

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