If I Were a Rich Man (Fiddler on the Roof)

Fiddler on the Roof opened on Broadway in September 1964, with a book by Joseph Stein after Sholem Aleichem's Tevye stories, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick and Jerome Robbins directing. Producers doubted that a musical about Jewish villagers facing expulsion from tsarist Russia could reach a general audience; it became the first Broadway show to pass three thousand performances. Robbins pressed the authors for months to say what the piece was actually about, and the answer — tradition — became the opening number and the frame for everything that follows. Zero Mostel created Tevye.