Lin-Manuel Miranda, Hamilton, “Dear Theodosia”
Nikki Renée Daniels
Lin-Manuel Miranda had already achieved renown on Broadway for In the Heights (off-Broadway, 2006; Broadway, 2007) before launching the juggernaut of Hamilton. The show debuted at New York’s Public Theater in 2015, creating a sensation that resulted in a transfer to Broadway later that year. Miranda’s score brilliantly combines the musical worlds of hip-hop, jazz, and R&B with a quintessentially Broadway idiom. In addition to special recognition from the Kennedy Center Honors and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Hamilton won Tony, Grammy, and Olivier awards. It has made an incalculable contribution to furthering the art of musical theater, while at the same time using that art to illuminate momentous events in American history.
When performed within the show itself, “Dear Theodosia” — sung towards the end of the first act — is a duet between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton. Each man’s wife has just given birth: Theodosia is Burr’s daughter and Philip is Hamilton’s son. In one of the show’s most intimate numbers, the ecstatic Burr and Hamilton think of their newborn children, vowing to give them a world in which they can thrive and fulfill their potential.
*Lyric debut
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Photos: Kyle Flubacker
