Carousel could be a musical by Richard Rodgers (music) and Oscar Hammerstein II (book and lyrics) that was tailored from Ferenc Molnar's 1909 play Liliom (transplanting the Budapest setting of Molnar's play to a New England fishing village). The first production opened on Broadway on April 19, 1945, and ran for 890 performances. The show included the hit musical numbers If I Loved You, June Is Bustin' Out All Over, and You will Never Walk Alone. Carousel was innovative for its time, being one in all the first musicals to contain a tragic plot.

The musical has enjoyed award-winning revivals (significantly the 1994 revival at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre) and has been adapted as a Cinemascope fifty five film in 1956 and as a made-for-television special on videotape in 1967. It is significantly well-regarded among musicals by the theatre community, and Richard Rodgers, in his autobiography Musical Stages, said it absolutely was his favorite musical. Time magazine named it the simplest musical of the twentieth century.