Yentl, Barbra Streisand, and Music of the Mind

Abstract In staged and film musicals, songs are usually delivered as performances. A character, for example, provides an emotional response to a question, such as a declaration of love. The resulting song enhances the answer. Yentl (1983), based on the short story “Yentl the Yeshiva Boy” by Isaac Bashevis Singer, is a musical film where the majority of the songs present the title character’s inner thoughts, explaining the motives of a female disguised as a male. Barbra Streisand produced and directed the film, co-wrote the script with Jack Rosenthal, played the title role, and sang all of the songs, an unusual concentration of responsibilities in one person. She did not intend Yentl as a musical, but had such trouble securing studio backing for the project that she found herself required to use the most famous arrow in her quiver of talents. Her friends the lyricists Marilyn and Alan Bergman convinced Streisand to make Yentl into a musical as a way for the character to explain and express herself. Michel Legrand, another friend, wrote the music. Streisand contributed song ideas and listened as they wrote the score, which won an Academy Award and became well known from its successful soundtrack album. Yentl is an unusual musical, made possible by the star’s fame and title character’s strong beliefs: her obsession with studying the Torah; her outrage over the treatment of women; and her love for her father, study partner Avigdor, and Hadass, the woman that Avigdor also loves.