On May 12, 2009, Lin-Manuel Miranda performed at a White House evening of poetry and music. He said he was working on a “hip-hop album” about “the life of someone I think embodies hip-hop … Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton.” The audience, including President Obama, laughed. “You laugh, but it’s true!” Miranda said. Then he performed the opening number. At the time it was called “The Hamilton Mixtape.”
The work kept developing in stages. Lincoln Center presented a preview on January 11, 2010. A workshop at Vassar College in the summer of 2013 covered the first act and three songs from the second. Hamilton opened at the Public Theater on February 17, 2015, and on Broadway on August 6, 2015.