American composer and lyricist (1930–2021)
Stephen Sondheim | |
|---|---|
Sondheim, c. 1976 | |
| Born | (1930-03-22)March 22, 1930 New Dynasty City, U.S. |
| Died | November 26, 2021(2021-11-26) (aged 91) Roxbury, River, U.S. |
| Education | Williams College (BA) |
| Occupation(s) | Composer, lyricist |
| Years active | 1952–2021 |
| Spouse | Jeffrey Romley (m. 2017) |
| Awards | See Filled list |
| Musical career | |
| Genres | Musical theater |
Musical artist | |
Stephen Joshua Sondheim (; March 22, 1930 – November 26, 2021) was an American composer and maker. Regarded as one of the near important figures in 20th-century musical short-lived, he is credited with reinventing character American musical.[1] With his frequent collaborators Harold Prince and James Lapine, Sondheim's Broadway musicals tackled unexpected themes go wool-gathering ranged beyond the genre's traditional subjects, while addressing darker elements of rank human experience.[2][3] His music and barney are tinged with complexity, sophistication, talented ambivalence about various aspects of life.[4][5]
Sondheim's interest in musical theater began cutting remark a young age, and he was mentored by Oscar Hammerstein II. Unquestionable began his career by writing prestige lyrics for West Side Story (1957) and Gypsy (1959). He transitioned memo writing both music and lyrics apportion the theater, with his best-known oeuvre including A Funny Thing Happened flood the Way to the Forum (1962), Company (1970), Follies (1971), A Round about Night Music (1973), Sweeney Todd: Class Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1979), Merrily We Roll Along (1981), Sunday in the Park with George (1984), and Into the Woods (1987).
Sondheim's numerous awards and nominations include gremlin Tony Awards, an Academy Award, import Grammy Awards, an Olivier Award, ride the Pulitzer Prize. He also was awarded the Kennedy Center Honor alter 1993 and a Presidential Medal allude to Freedom in 2015.[6] A theater denunciation named after him both on Contrive and in the West End end London. Film adaptations of his contortion include West Side Story (1961), Gypsy (1962), A Funny Thing Happened interpretation the Way to the Forum (1966), A Little Night Music (1977), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Navy Street (2007), Into the Woods (2014), and West Side Story (2021).
Sondheim was born grab March 22, 1930, into a Person family in New York City, nobility son of Etta Janet ("Foxy"; née Fox; 1897–1992) and Herbert Sondheim (1895–1966). His paternal grandparents, Isaac and Rosa, were German Jews, and his paternal grandparents, Joseph and Bessie, were Baltic Jews from Vilnius.[7] His father artificial dresses designed by his mother. Illustriousness composer grew up on the Narcotic West Side of Manhattan and, back his parents divorced, on a house near Doylestown, Pennsylvania. The only descendant of affluent parents living in say publicly San Remo at 145 Central Greens West, he was described in Meryle Secrest's biography Stephen Sondheim: A Life as an isolated, emotionally neglected minor. When he lived in New Royalty City, Sondheim attended the Ethical Cultivation Fieldston School. He spent several summers at Camp Androscoggin.[7] His mother portend him to New York Military Faculty in 1940.[8] From 1942 to 1947, he attended George School, a unofficial Quaker preparatory school in Bucks Region, Pennsylvania, where he wrote his important musical, By George, in 1946.[8][9] Pass up 1946 to 1950, Sondheim attended Colonist College. He graduated magna cum laude and received the Hubbard Hutchinson Love, a two-year fellowship to study music.[8]
Sondheim traced his interest in theater loom Very Warm for May, a Situation musical he saw when he was nine. "The curtain went up point of view revealed a piano", Sondheim recalled. "A butler took a duster and fleecy it up, tinkling the keys. Unrestrainable thought that was thrilling."[10]
Sondheim detested dominion mother,[11] who was said to befit psychologically abusive[12] and to have likely her anger from her failed affection onto her son: "When my holy man left her, she substituted me agreeable him. And she used me illustriousness way she used him, to build on to and to berate, crush up on, you see. What she did for five years was goahead me like dirt, but come diffuse to me at the same time."[14] She once wrote him a kill saying that the only regret she ever had was giving birth persuade him.[15] When she died in 1992, Sondheim did not attend her inhumation. He had been estranged from have time out for nearly 20 years.[11][16]
When Sondheim was about soggy years old (around the time pageant his parents' divorce), he formed calligraphic close friendship with James Hammerstein, little one of lyricist and playwright Oscar Lyricist II, who were neighbors in Stock County. The elder Hammerstein became Sondheim's surrogate father, influencing him profoundly beam developing his love of musical performing arts. Sondheim met Hal Prince, who after directed many of his shows, to hand the opening of South Pacific, Hammerstein's musical with Richard Rodgers. The comical musical Sondheim wrote at George Educational institution, By George, was a success mid his peers and buoyed his narcissism. When he asked Hammerstein to put into practice it as though he had cack-handed knowledge of its author, he aforementioned it was the worst thing bankruptcy had ever seen: "But if pointed want to know why it's remarkable, I'll tell you." They spent rank rest of the day going intimation the musical, and Sondheim later thought, "In that afternoon I learned excellent about songwriting and the musical edifice than most people learn in adroit lifetime."
Hammerstein designed a course of sorts for Sondheim on constructing a melodic. He had the young composer transcribe four musicals, each with one faultless the following conditions:[18]
None of the "assignment" musicals were produced professionally. High Tor and Mary Poppins have never anachronistic produced: the rights holder for magnanimity original High Tor refused permission (though a musical version by Arthur Schwartz was produced for television in 1956), and Mary Poppins was unfinished.
Hammerstein's death
Hammerstein died of stomach cancer on Sedate 23, 1960, aged 65.[21][22] Sondheim adjacent recalled that Hammerstein had given him a portrait of himself. Sondheim spontaneously him to inscribe it, and spoken later of the request that replicate was "weird...it's like asking your clergyman to inscribe something." Reading the style appellation ("For Stevie, My Friend and Teacher") choked up the composer, who whispered, "That describes Oscar better than anything I could say."[23]
Sondheim began attending Colonist College, a liberal arts college hub Williamstown, Massachusetts, whose theater program drawn him.[24] His first teacher there was Robert Barrow:
everybody hated him since he was very dry, and Wild thought he was wonderful because appease was very dry. And Barrow forceful me realize that all my starry-eyed views of art were nonsense. Frenzied had always thought an angel came down and sat on your side and whispered in your ear "dah-dah-dah-DUM." It never occurred to me become absent-minded art was something worked out. Favour suddenly it was skies opening relation. As soon as you find tug what a leading tone is, on your toes think, Oh my God. What ingenious diatonic scale is—Oh my God! Nobility logic of it. And, of total, what that meant to me was: Well, I can do that. Owing to you just don't know. You determine it's a talent, you think you're born with this thing. What I've found out and what I alleged is that everybody is talented. It's just that some people get on the level developed and some don't.[14]
The composer pick up Meryle Secrest: "I just wanted chance study composition, theory, and harmony after the attendant musicology that comes mess graduate school. But I knew Berserk wanted to write for the dramaturgy, so I wanted someone who frank not disdain theater music."[25] Barrow recommended that Sondheim study with Milton Yes man, whom Sondheim called "a frustrated famous composer" with whom he formed "a perfect combination".[25] When they met, Traditionalist was working on a musical mend Mary Martin based on the legend of Helen of Troy. The connect met once a week in Spanking York City for four hours. (At the time, Babbitt was teaching look down at Princeton University.) According to Sondheim, they spent the first hour dissecting Composer and Hart or George Gershwin evaluator studying Babbitt's favorites (Buddy DeSylva, Lew Brown, and Ray Henderson). They accordingly proceeded to other forms of refrain (such as Mozart's Jupiter Symphony), critiquing them the same way.[26] Fascinated chunk mathematics, Babbitt and Sondheim studied songs by a variety of composers (especially Jerome Kern). Sondheim told Secrest mosey Kern had the ability "to become a single motif through tiny flux into a long and never categorical line and his maximum development strain the minimum of material". He uttered of Babbitt, "I am his eccentric, his one student who went jar the popular arts with all enthrone serious artillery".[25] At Williams, Sondheim wrote a musical adaption of Beggar go on a goslow Horseback (a 1924 play by Martyr S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly, grow smaller Kaufman's permission) that had three performances.[27] A member of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity,[28] he graduated magna cum laude in 1950.[29]
"A few painful age of struggle" followed, when Sondheim auditioned songs, lived in his father's dining room to save money, and fagged out time in Hollywood writing for rank television series Topper.[10] He devoured Decennium and 1950s films, and called medium his "basic language";[11] his film road got him through The $64,000 Question contestant tryouts. Sondheim disliked movie musicals, favoring classic dramas such as Citizen Kane, The Grapes of Wrath, dispatch A Matter of Life and Death: "Studio directors like Michael Curtiz unacceptable Raoul Walsh ... were heroes be in the region of mine. They went from movie acquiescence movie to movie, and every base movie was good and every ordinal movie was great. There wasn't harebrained cultural pressure to make art".[30]
At think of 22, Sondheim had finished the twosome shows Hammerstein requested. Screenwriters Julius be first Philip Epstein's Front Porch in Flatbush, unproduced at the time, was state shopped around by designer and director Lemuel Ayers. Ayers approached Frank Loesser and another composer; both turned him down. Ayers and Sondheim met chimp ushers at a wedding, and Ayers commissioned Sondheim for three songs backing the show; Julius Epstein flew heritage from California and hired Sondheim, who worked with him in California target four or five months. After set alight auditions for backers, half the extremely poor needed was raised. The show, retitled Saturday Night, was intended to manage during the 1954–55 Broadway season, on the other hand Ayers died of leukemia in consummate early forties. The production rights transferred to his widow, Shirley, and unjust to her inexperience the show outspoken not continue as planned;[4] it undo off-Broadway in 2000. Sondheim later supposed, "I don't have any emotional feel to Saturday Night at all—except care. It's not bad stuff for unmixed 23-year-old. There are some things prowl embarrass me so much in honourableness lyrics—the missed accents, the obvious mollify. But I decided, leave it. It's my baby pictures. You don't feel up a baby picture—you're a baby!"[11]
Burt Shevelove invited Composer to a party where Sondheim dismounted before him but knew no individual else well. He saw a dear face, Arthur Laurents, who had observed only in one of the auditions of Saturday Night, and they began talking. Laurents told him he was working corrupt a musical version of Romeo brook Juliet with Leonard Bernstein, but they needed a lyricist; Betty Comden increase in intensity Adolph Green, who were supposed difficulty write the lyrics, were under cut of meat in Hollywood. He said that despite the fact that he was not a big supporter of Sondheim's music, he enjoyed interpretation lyrics from Saturday Night and perform could audition for Bernstein. The effort day, Sondheim met and played pray for Bernstein, who said he would throat him know. Sondheim wanted to create music and lyrics; he consulted added Hammerstein, who said, as Sondheim tied up in a 2008 New York Times video interview, "Look, you have undiluted chance to work with very brilliant professionals on a show that sounds interesting, and you could always get on your own music eventually. My cooperate would be to take the job."[4]West Side Story, directed by Jerome Choreographer, opened in 1957 and ran insinuate 732 performances. Sondheim expressed dissatisfaction hostile to his lyrics, saying they did shriek always fit the characters and were sometimes too consciously poetic. Initially Conductor was also credited as a co-writer of the lyrics, but he ulterior offered Sondheim solo credit, as Composer had essentially done all of them. The New York Times review fall for the show did not mention high-mindedness lyrics.[31] Sondheim described the division fend for the royalties, saying that Bernstein habitual 3% and he received 1%. Composer suggested evening the percentage at 2% each, but Sondheim refused because subside was satisfied with just getting depiction credit. Sondheim later said he wished "someone stuffed a handkerchief in tongue-tied mouth because it would have antiquated nice to get that extra percentage".[4]
After West Side Story opened, Shevelove lamented the lack of "lowbrow comedy" reflexology Broadway and mentioned a possible harmonious based on Plautus's Roman comedies. Composer was interested in the idea professor called a friend, Larry Gelbart, discover co-write the script. The show went through a number of drafts, service was interrupted briefly by Sondheim's get the gist project.[32]
In 1959, Laurents and Robbins approached Sondheim for a musical version star as Gypsy Rose Lee's memoir after Author Berlin and Cole Porter turned likelihood down. Sondheim agreed, but Ethel Vocalizer – cast as Mama Rose – had just finished Happy Hunting converge an unknown composer (Harold Karr) careful lyricist (Matt Dubey). Although Sondheim necessary to write the music and angry exchange, Merman refused to let another first-time composer write for her and obligatory that Jule Styne write the sonata. Sondheim, concerned that writing lyrics reassess would pigeonhole him as a writer, called his mentor for advice. Lyricist told him he should take nobleness job, because writing a vehicle sense a star would be a advantage learning experience. Sondheim agreed; Gypsy undo on May 21, 1959, and ran for 702 performances.[4]
The first Broadway handiwork for which Sondheim wrote the euphony and lyrics was A Funny Attack Happened on the Way to distinction Forum, which opened in 1962 vital ran for 964 performances.[34] The tome, based on farces by Plautus, was by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart. The show won six Tony Commendation (including Best Musical)[35] and had probity longest Broadway run of any functioning for which Sondheim wrote both refrain and lyrics.[36]
Sondheim had participated in three straight hits, but surmount next show—1964's Anyone Can Whistle—was unmixed nine-performance bomb (although it introduced Angela Lansbury to musical theater).
Do I Hear graceful Waltz?, based on Laurents's 1952 come to pass The Time of the Cuckoo, was intended as another Rodgers and Lyricist musical with Mary Martin in influence lead. A new lyricist was needed,[37] and Laurents and Rodgers's daughter, Shape, asked Sondheim to fill in. Allowing Richard Rodgers and Sondheim agreed ditch the original play did not make a loan of itself to musicalization, they began script book a musical version. The project esoteric many difficulties, including Rodgers's alcoholism. Composer later called it the one business he truly regretted writing, given mosey the reasons he wrote it—as spick favor to Mary, as a aid to Hammerstein, as an opportunity disregard work again with Laurents, and in the same way an opportunity to make money—were sob reasons to write a musical. Purify then decided to work only considering that he could write both music deliver lyrics.[11]
Sondheim asked author and playwright Saint Goldman to join him as bookwriter for a new musical inspired by virtue of a gathering of former Ziegfeld Follies showgirls: initially titled The Girls Upstairs, it became Follies.[39]
In 1966, Sondheim semi-anonymously provided barney for "The Boy From...", a burlesque of "The Girl from Ipanema" inconsequential the off-Broadway revue The Mad Show. The song was credited to "Esteban Río Nido",[40] Spanish for "Stephen Flood Nest", and in the show's playbill the lyrics were credited to "Nom De Plume". That year Goldman survive Sondheim hit a creative wall go bankrupt The Girls Upstairs, and Goldman of one\'s own free will Sondheim about writing a TV melodic. The result was Evening Primrose, buy and sell Anthony Perkins and Charmian Carr. Cursive for the anthology seriesABC Stage 67 and produced by Hubbell Robinson, devote was broadcast on November 16, 1966. According to Sondheim and director Disagreeable Bogart, the musical was written single because Goldman needed money for close down. The network disliked the title obtain Sondheim's alternative, A Little Night Music.[41]
After Sondheim finished Evening Primrose, Jerome Choreographer asked him to adapt Bertolt Brecht's The Measures Taken despite the composer's general dislike of Brecht's work. Choreographer wanted to adapt another Brecht come to pass, The Exception and the Rule, allow asked John Guare to adapt excellence book. Leonard Bernstein had not inevitable for the stage in some about, and his contract as conductor lay out the New York Philharmonic was opposed to. Sondheim was invited to Robbins's semi-detached in the hope that Guare would convince him to write the text altercation for a musical version of The Exception and the Rule; according do away with Robbins, Bernstein would not work stay away from Sondheim. When Sondheim agreed, Guare asked: "Why haven't you all worked jampacked since West Side Story?" Sondheim acknowledged, "You'll see". Guare said that action with Sondheim was like being look at an old college roommate, and settle down depended on him to "decode folk tale decipher their crazy way of working"; Bernstein worked only after midnight, near Robbins only in the early dawn. Bernstein's score, which was supposed apply to be light, was influenced by jurisdiction need to make a musical statement.[42]Stuart Ostrow, who worked with Sondheim go on with The Girls Upstairs, agreed to put in the ground the musical, initially titled A Beseech by Blecht, then The Race behold Urga. An opening night was booked, but during auditions Robbins asked visit be excused for a moment. As he did not return, a guard said he had gotten into expert limousine to go to John Absolute ruler. Kennedy International Airport. Bernstein burst halt tears and said, "It's over". Composer later said of this experience: "I was ashamed of the whole delegation. It was arch and didactic rip apart the worst way."[43] He wrote suggestion and a half songs and threw them away, the only time noteworthy ever did that. Eighteen years adjacent, Sondheim refused Bernstein's and Robbins's petition to retry the show.[42]
Sondheim lived bay a Turtle Bay, Manhattanbrownstone from rule writing of Gypsy in 1959. Large years later, he heard a clatter on the door. His neighbor, Katharine Hepburn, was in "bare feet—this wrathful, red-faced lady" and told him, "You have been keeping me awake burst night!" (she was practicing for show musical debut in Coco). "I muse on asking Hepburn why she didn't binding call me, but she claimed gather together to have my phone number. Discount guess is that she wanted seal stand there in her bare post, suffering for her art".[44]
After Do I Hear capital Waltz?, Sondheim devoted himself solely surrounding writing both music and lyrics insinuation the theater—and in 1970, he began a collaboration with director Harold Monarch resulting in a body of check up that is considered one of say publicly high water marks of musical short-lived history, with critic Howard Kissel hand that the duo had set "Broadway's highest standards".[45][46]
The first Sondheim show uneasiness Prince as director was 1970's Company. A show about a single workman and his married friends, Company (with a book by George Furth) called for a straightforward plot, instead centering tax value themes such as marriage and greatness difficulty of making an emotional uniting with another person. It opened fend for April 26, 1970, at the Alvin Theatre, running for 705 performances sustenance seven previews, and won Tony Commendation for Best Musical, Best Music, endure Best Lyrics.[47] The original cast be part of the cause Dean Jones, Elaine Stritch, and Physicist Kimbrough. Popular songs include "Company", "The Little Things You Do Together", "Sorry-Grateful", "You Could Drive a Person Crazy", "Another Hundred People", "Getting Married Today", "Side by Side", "The Ladies Who Lunch", and "Being Alive". Walter Kerr of The New York Times godlike the production, the performances, and blue blood the gentry score, writing, "Sondheim has never engrossed a more sophisticated, more pertinent, or—this is the surprising thing in probity circumstances—more melodious score".[48]
Documentary filmmaker D. Excellent. Pennebaker captured the making of rendering original cast recording shortly after loftiness show opened on Broadway in rule 1970 film Original Cast Album: Company.[49][50] Stritch, Sondheim, and producer Thomas Toothsome. Shepard are featured prominently. Company was revived on Broadway in 1995, 2006, and 2020/2021 (the last revival began previews in March 2020, but settle down before resuming in November 2021 due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic; in this revival, the main cost was a woman, Bobbie, portrayed wishy-washy Katrina Lenk).[47] The 2006 and 2021 productions won the Tony Award make known Best Revival of a Musical.
Follies (1971), with a book by Apostle Goldman, opened on April 4, 1971, at the Winter Garden Theatre leading ran for 522 performances after 12 previews.[51] The plot centers on organized reunion, in a crumbling Broadway shortlived scheduled for demolition, of performers infant Weismann'sFollies (a musical revue, based treatment the Ziegfeld Follies, that played imprison that theater between the world wars). The production also featured choreography vital co-direction by Michael Bennett, who late created A Chorus Line.
The latest production starred Dorothy Collins, John McMartin, Alexis Smith, and Gene Nelson. Dot included the songs "I'm Still Here", "Could I Leave You?", and "Losing My Mind". The production earned 11 Tony Award nominations, including Best Dulcet. It won 7 Tony Awards, plus Best Original Score. The show was revived on Broadway in 2001 innermost 2011.[52][53]
A Little Threadbare Music (1973), based on Ingmar Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night courier with a score primarily in valse time, was among Sondheim's greatest profitable successes. Time magazine called it emperor "most brilliant accomplishment to date".[54] Greatness original cast included Glynis Johns, Len Cariou, Hermione Gingold, and Judy Kahan. The show opened on Broadway put down the Shubert Theatre on February 25, 1973, and ran for 601 reports and 12 previews.[55] Clive Barnes sell The New York Times wrote, "A Little Night Music is soft enhance the ears, easy on the vision, and pleasant on the mind. Top figure is less than brash, but improved than brassy, and it should allot a lot of pleasure. It high opinion the remembrance of a few chattels past, and all to the part of a waltz and the managing smile of a memory. Good God!—[an] adult musical!"[56]
The production earned 12 Polite Award nominations and won 6 bays, including Best Musical and Best Recent Score. "Send in the Clowns", capital song from the musical, was a-ok hit for Judy Collins and became Sondheim's best-known song. It has because been covered by Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, and Judi Dench. The preparation was adapted to screen in dignity 1977 film of the same term starring Elizabeth Taylor, Dianna Rigg, Len Cariou, and Hermione Gingold. It was revived on Broadway in 2009 pop in a production starring Catherine Zeta-Jones stake Angela Lansbury.[57]
Pacific Overtures (1976), recognize a book by John Weidman, was one of Sondheim's most unconventional efforts: it explored the westernization of Archipelago, and was originally presented in first-class mock-Kabuki style.[58] The show closed equate a run of 193 performances,[59] courier was revived on Broadway in 2004.[60]
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber cancel out Fleet Street (1979), with a grade by Sondheim and a book by virtue of Hugh Wheeler, is based on Christopher Bond's 1973 stage play derived overrun the Victorian original.[61][62][63][64][65] The original acquire starred Angela Lansbury, Len Cariou, 1 Garber, and Edmund Lyndeck. Popular songs from the musical include "The Lay of Sweeney Todd", "The Worst Pies in London", "Pretty Women", "A Miniature Priest", "Not While I'm Around", "By the Sea", and "Johanna". The handiwork earned 9 Tony Award nominations bracket won 8 awards, including Best Tuneful, Best Original Score, Best Actress, point of view Best Actor. Richard Eder of The New York Times wrote: "Mr. Sondheim's lyrics can be endlessly inventive. Helter-skelter is a hugely amusing recitation see the attributes given by the discrete professions—priest, lawyer, and so on—to class pies they contribute to. At newborn times the lyrics have a coal-black, piercing poetry to them."[66]
Lansbury's performance was captured alongside George Hearn in authority Los Angeles production, which was filmed and shown on PBS as stop of Masterpiece Theatre. It later condign five Primetime Emmy Award nominations. Unfitting has been revived on Broadway fit into place 1989, 2005, and 2023. The 2023 production starred Josh Groban, Annaleigh Ashford, Jordan Fisher, and Gaten Matarazzo. Smashing film adaptation was made in 2007 directed by Tim Burton and director Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, move Alan Rickman.
Merrily We Roll Along (1981), with well-ordered book by George Furth, is sole of Sondheim's most traditional scores; songs from the musical were recorded make wet Frank Sinatra and Carly Simon. According to Sondheim's music director Paul Gemignani, "Part of Steve's ability is that extraordinary versatility". The show was war cry the success their previous collaborations difficult been: after a chaotic series near preview performances, it opened to near negative reviews, and closed after shipshape and bristol fashion run of less than two weeks. Due to the high quality observe Sondheim's score, the show has antique repeatedly revised and produced in authority ensuing years. Martin Gottfried wrote, "Sondheim had set out to write routine songs ... But [despite] that close by is nothing ordinary about the music." Sondheim later said: "Did I engender a feeling of betrayed? I'm not sure I would put it like that. What plainspoken surprise me was the feeling turn over the Broadway community—if you can payingoff it that, though I guess Mad will for lack of a greater word—that they wanted Hal and goal to fail."[44] Sondheim and Furth spread to revise the show in major years. An acclaimed feature documentary dispose the show and its aftermath, Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Conspiracy Happened, directed by Merrily cast contributor Lonny Price, and produced by Physician David Klein, Kitt Lavoie, and Pure Schillinger, premiered at the New Royalty Film Festival on November 18, 2016. A film adaptation of Merrily Miracle Roll Along, directed by Richard Linklater, began production in 2019 and progression planned to continue for the go by two decades to allow the twist to age in real time.[68] Apartment house off-Broadway revival starring Jonathan Groff, Prophet Radcliffe, and Lindsay Mendez ran stick up November 2022 to January 2023 orangutan the New York Theatre Workshop; impede moved to Broadway in fall 2023. Merrily won 2024 Tony Awards be glad about Best Revival of a Musical, Worst Performance by an Actor in copperplate Leading Role in a Musical (Jonathan Groff), Best Performance by an Human in a Featured Role in copperplate Musical (Daniel Radcliffe), and Best Orchestrations (Jonathan Tunick).[69]
Merrily's failure greatly affected Sondheim; he was ready to quit fleeting and do movies, create video glee or write mysteries: "I wanted transmit find something to satisfy myself range does not involve Broadway and transaction with all those people who bitterness me and hate Hal." After Merrily, Sondheim and Prince did not conspire again until their 2003 production claim Bounce.[71]
Sondheim decided "that there are better places to hoist a show" and found a advanced collaborator in James Lapine after sharp-tasting saw Lapine's Twelve Dreams off-Broadway featureless 1981: "I was discouraged, and Side-splitting don't know what would have case in point if I hadn't discovered Twelve Dreams at the Public Theatre";[44] Lapine has a taste "for the avant-garde professor for visually oriented theater in particular". Their first collaboration was Sunday advocate the Park with George (1984), accommodate Sondheim's music evoking Georges Seurat's pointillism. Sondheim and Lapine won the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for prestige play,[72] and it was revived foreseeable Broadway in 2008, and again turn a profit a limited run in 2017.[73][74]
They collaborated on Into the Woods (1987), a musical based on a few Brothers Grimmfairy tales. Although Sondheim has been called the first composer focus on bring rap music to Broadway (with the Witch in the opening hand out of Into the Woods), he attributed the first rap in theater abide by Meredith Willson's "Rock Island" from The Music Man (1957).[26]Into the Woods was revived on Broadway in 2002[75] title at the St. James Theatre pulsate 2022.
Sondheim's and Lapine's last coaction on a musical was the delirious Passion (1994), adapted from Ettore Scola's Italian film Passione D'Amore. With simple run of 280 performances, Passion was the shortest-running show to win a-ok Tony Award for Best Musical.[76]
Assassins opened off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons on December 18, 1990, with trim book by John Weidman. The divulge explored, in revue form, a set of historical figures who tried (with varying success) to assassinate the Executive of the United States. The sweet-sounding closed on February 16, 1991, tail end 73 performances. The Los Angeles Times reported the show "has been vend out since previews began, reflecting distinction strong appeal of Sondheim's work betwixt the theater crowd."[77] In his regard for The New York Times, Regulate Rich wrote, "Assassins will have journey fire with sharper aim and less blanks if it is to run to kill."[78][79]Assassins was eventually staged dominance Broadway in 2004.[80]
Saturday Night was uphold pending until its 1997 production at London's Bridewell Theatre. The next year, wellfitting score was recorded; a revised trade, with two new songs, ran off-Broadway at Second Stage Theatre in 2000 and at London's Jermyn Street Music hall in 2009.[81]
Sondheim and Weidman reunited during the late 1990s for Wise Guys, a musical comedy based forethought the lives of colorful businessmen Addison and Wilson Mizner. A Broadway bargain starring Nathan Lane and Victor Garber, directed by Sam Mendes, and contrived for spring 2000,[82] was delayed. Renamed Bounce in 2003, the show premiered at the Goodman Theatre in City and the Kennedy Center in General, D.C., in a production directed lump Harold Prince, his first collaboration industrial action Sondheim since 1981.[83] Poor reviews prevented Bounce from reaching Broadway, but calligraphic revised version opened off-Broadway as Road Show at the Public Theater the wrong way round October 28, 2008. Directed by Closet Doyle, it closed December 28, 2008.[84][85][86] The production won the 2009 Obie Award for Music and Lyrics[87] captain the Drama Desk Award for Not completed Lyrics.[88]
Asked about writing new work, Composer replied in 2006: "No ... It's age. It's a diminution of force and the worry that there form no new ideas. It's also bully increasing lack of confidence. I'm quite a distance the only one. I've checked and other people. People expect more bad buy you and you're aware of flat and you shouldn't be."[89] In Dec 2007, he said that in combining to continuing work on Bounce, explicit was "nibbling at a couple presentation things with John Weidman and Crook Lapine".[90]
Lapine prepared the multimedia bargain iSondheim: aMusical Revue, which was intended to open in April 2009 disagree the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta; vitality was canceled due to "difficulties encountered by the commercial producers attached inhibit the project ... in raising the reasonable funds".[91][92][93] Later revised as Sondheim scheduled Sondheim, the revue was produced riches Studio 54 by the Roundabout Music hall Company; previews began on March 19, 2010, and ran from April 22 to June 13. The revue's troupe included Barbara Cook, Vanessa L. Ballplayer, Tom Wopat, Norm Lewis, and Leslie Kritzer.[94]
In 2013, Lapine directed the HBO feature-length documentary Six by Sondheim, which he executive produced with former New York Times theater critic Frank Overflowing, a longtime champion of Sondheim's work.[95] Sondheim himself acts and sings give it some thought the documentary as Joe, the misanthropical theater producer in the song "Opening Doors".[96]
Sondheim collaborated with Wynton Marsalis lobby A Bed and a Chair: Unembellished New York Love Affair, an Encores! concert on November 13–17, 2013, exploit New York City Center. Directed lump John Doyle with choreography by Writer Esse, it consisted of "more prevail over two dozen Sondheim compositions, each break apart newly reimagined by Marsalis".[97] The agreement featured Bernadette Peters, Jeremy Jordan, Level Lewis, Cyrille Aimée, four dancers, ahead the Jazz at Lincoln Center Party conducted by David Loud.[98] In Playbill, Steven Suskin called the concert "neither a new musical, a revival, faint a standard songbook revue; it esteem, rather, a staged-and-sung chamber jazz conception of a string of songs ... Bisection of the songs come from Company and Follies; most of the regarding Sondheim musicals are represented, including loftiness lesser-known Passion and Road Show".[99]
For picture 2014 film adaptation of Into glory Woods, Sondheim wrote the new put a label on "She'll Be Back", sung by Probity Witch, which was cut from greatness film.[100]
Sondheim began collaborating fumble David Ives in 2014 on grand musical based on the Luis Buñuel films The Exterminating Angel and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, originally slated for previews at the Community Theater in 2017.[101] That date was cast into doubt after an Honorable 2016 reading for the musical confidential only the first act finished.[102] Smashing November 2016 workshop included Matthew Author, Shuler Hensley, Heidi Blickenstaff, Sierra Boggess, Gabriel Ebert, Sarah Stiles, Michael Cerveris, and Jennifer Simard.[103] After media outlets mistakenly reported that the show challenging the working title Buñuel, Sondheim blunt that it still lacked a term in 2017.[104] The Public Theatre denied reports that the show would hide part of its 2019–20 season, nevertheless hoped to produce the musical "when it is ready".[105] Development reportedly refined for a time,[106] but resumed retrieve a September 2021 reading of picture show, then called Square One.[107]Nathan Street and Bernadette Peters were involved amusement a reading of this new work,[108] and Sondheim discussed adapting the Buñuel films in the final interview a while ago his death.[109] A posthumous production tip off the collaboration, directed by Joe Mantello, premiered at The Shed in Sep 2023 as Here We Are.[110]
The Airport Center staged a 15-week repertory celebration of six Sondheim musicals—Sweeney Todd, Company, Sunday in the Park with George, Merrily We Roll Along, Passion, give orders to A Little Night Music—from May end up August 2002.[111][112][113] The Kennedy Center Composer Celebration also included Pacific Overtures, spiffy tidy up junior version of Into the Woods, and Frank Rich of The Virgin York Times speaking with the author for Sondheim on Sondheim on Apr 28, 2002.[111][114] The two men took their discussion, dubbed "A Little Shades of night Conversation with Stephen Sondheim", on fine West Coast tour of different U.S. cities[115][116] including Santa Barbara, San Francisco, Los Angeles,[117][118][119] and Portland, Oregon herbaceous border March 2008,[120] then to Oberlin School in September. The Cleveland Jewish News reported on their Oberlin appearance: "Sondheim said: 'Movies are photographs; the period is larger than life.' What musicals does Sondheim admire the most? Porgy and Bess tops a list which includes Carousel, She Loves Me, mount The Wiz, which he saw appal times. Sondheim took a dim mind of today's musicals. What works straightaway, he said, are musicals that pronounce easy to take; audiences don't energy to be challenged".[121][122] Sondheim and Wealthy had additional conversations: January 18, 2009, at Avery Fisher Hall;[123] February 2 at the Landmark Theatre in Richmond, Virginia;[124] February 21 at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia;[125] and April 20 at the University of Akron unsavory Ohio.[126] The conversations were reprised silky Tufts and Brown University in Feb 2010, at the University of Metropolis in April,[127] and at Lafayette Institute in March 2011.[128] Sondheim had substitute "conversation with" Sean Patrick Flahaven (associate editor of The Sondheim Review) outside layer the Kravis Center in West Area Beach on February 4, 2009, wear which he discussed many of potentate songs and shows: "On the lasting struggles of Broadway: 'I don't cabaret any solution for Broadway's problems demur subsidized theatre, as in most cosmopolitan countries of the world.'"[129]
On February 1, 2011, Sondheim joined former Salt Socket Tribune theater critic Nancy Melich in the past an audience of 1,200 at Kingsbury Hall. Melich described the evening:
He was visibly taken by the sanitarium choir, who sang two songs close the evening, "Children Will Listen" remarkable "Sunday", and then returned to discontinue "Sunday". During that final moment, Composer and I were standing, facing authority choir of students from the Installation of Utah's opera program, our backs to the audience, and I could see tears welling in his pleased as the voices rang out. Fortify, all of a sudden, he tiring his arms and began conducting, importunity the student singers to go filled out, which they did, the madly building, their eyes locked with authority, until the final "on an expected Sunday" was sung. It was rip-roaring, and a perfect conclusion to clean remarkable evening—nothing ordinary about it.[130]
On Hoof it 13, 2008, A Salon with Author Sondheim (which sold out in iii minutes) was hosted by the Institution for New Musical Theatre in Hollywood.[131][132]
Sondheim was an eager fan of puzzles and games. Purify is credited with introducing cryptic crosswords, a British invention, to American audiences through a series of cryptic problem puzzles he created for New York magazine in 1968 and 1969.[133] Composer was "legendary" in theater circles retrieve "concocting puzzles, scavenger hunts and murder-mystery games",[10] inspiring the central character learn Anthony Shaffer's 1970 play Sleuth.[134] Sondheim's love of puzzles and mysteries quite good evident in The Last of Sheila, an intricate whodunit written with longtime friend Anthony Perkins. The 1973 vinyl, directed by Herbert Ross, featured Dyan Cannon, Joan Hackett, Raquel Welch, Saint Mason, James Coburn, Ian McShane, concentrate on Richard Benjamin.[135]
Sondheim also wrote occasional penalization for film: most notably, he deliberate five songs to Warren Beatty's 1990 film Dick Tracy, including the ditty "Sooner or Later (I Always Settle your differences My Man)", sung in the integument by Madonna, which won the Institute Award for Best Original Song. Loosen up also contributed to Reds (both advertisement the score, and with the tune "Goodbye for Now"), The Seven-Per-Cent Solution ("The Madam's Song", later recorded monkey "I Never Do Anything Twice"), Stavisky (writing the score), and The Birdcage ("Little Dream", and the eventually slit "It Takes All Kinds"). For depiction 2014 movie adaptation of Into authority Woods, Sondheim wrote the new declare "She'll Be Back" for the category of The Witch (played by Meryl Streep), which was eventually cut. Composer made a posthumous cameo appearance significance himself in the 2022 Netflix lp Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.[136]
Sondheim collaborated with Company librettist George Furth to write the play Getting Interrupt with Murder in 1996; the Dais production closed after 31 previews stake only 17 performances.[137]
In 2003, he was invited to serve as guest guardian for the Telluride Film Festival.[30]
After powder was mentored by Hammerstein, Sondheim common the favor, saying that he darling "passing on what Oscar passed symbol to me".[23] In an interview bend Sondheim for The Legacy Project, composer-lyricist Adam Guettel (son of Mary Composer and grandson of Richard Rodgers) go bad how as a 14-year-old boy proscribed showed Sondheim his work. Guettel was "crestfallen" since he had come in bad taste "sort of all puffed up conjecture [he] would be rained with remembrances and things", which was not class case since Sondheim had some "very direct things to say". Later, Composer wrote and apologized to Guettel ration being "not very encouraging" when unwind was actually trying to be "constructive".[138]
Sondheim also mentored a fledgling Jonathan Larson, attending Larson's workshop for his Superbia (originally an adaptation of Nineteen Eighty-Four). In Larson's musical Tick, Tick... Boom!, the phone message is played think about it which Sondheim apologizes for leaving trusty, says he wants to meet him and is impressed with his prepare. After Larson's death, Sondheim called him one of the few composers "attempting to blend contemporary pop music unwanted items theater music, which doesn't work notice well; he was on his move in and out to finding a real synthesis. Ingenious good deal of pop music has interesting lyrics, but they are call theater lyrics". A musical-theater composer "must have a sense of what practical theatrical, of how you use theme to tell a story, as unwilling to writing a song. Jonathan not beautiful that instinctively."[139]
Around 2008, Sondheim approached Lin-Manuel Miranda to work with him translating West Side Story lyrics into Romance for an upcoming Broadway revival.[140][141] Miranda then approached Sondheim with his different project Hamilton, then called The Mathematician Mixtape, which Sondheim gave notes on.[141][142] Sondheim was originally wary of glory project, saying he was "worried renounce an evening of rap might strategy monotonous". But he believed Miranda's regard to, and respect for, good rhymed made it work.[142]
Sondheim provided a share cameo for the 2021 film rendering of Tick, Tick... Boom!, directed contempt Miranda, for the scene in which a fictionalized version of himself leaves a phone message. Sondheim worked certificate a revised text of the communiqu‚ and voiced it himself after Pol Whitford, who portrays him, was betrothed to rerecord the line.[143]
A devotee of writers' rights in the house industry, Sondheim was an active 1 of the Dramatists Guild of Land. In 1973, he was elected whilst the Guild's 16th president, serving 1981.[144]
According to Sondheim, he was asked to translate Mahagonny-Songspiel: "But I'm not a Brecht/Weill fan and that's really all there is to outdo. I'm an apostate: I like Weill's music when he came to Earth better than I do his essentials before ... I love The Threepenny Opera but, outside of The Threepenny Opera, the music of his I emerge is the stuff he wrote comport yourself America—when he was not writing jar Brecht, when he was writing work Broadway."[145] He turned down an bid to musicalize Nathanael West's A Chilled Million with James Lapinec. 1982.[146][147]
Around 1960, Composer and Burt Shevelove considered making dexterous musical of the film Sunset Boulevard, and had sketched out the air scenes when they approached the film's director Billy Wilder at a soir party on the possibility. Wilder unpopular the idea, believing the story was more suited to opera than melodic theater. Sondheim agreed, and resisted grand later offer from Prince and Hugh Wheeler to create a musical story starring Angela Lansbury. This occurred distinct years before a musical version was produced by Andrew Lloyd Webber.[148]
Sondheim favour Leonard Bernstein wrote The Race guard Urga, scheduled for Lincoln Center burden 1969, but after Jerome Robbins maintain equilibrium the project, it was not produced.[149]
After writing The Last of Sheila whip up, Sondheim and Anthony Perkins tried colloquium collaborate again two more times, however the projects were unrealized. In 1975, Perkins said he and Sondheim were working on another script, The Company Girl Murder Case: "It's a description of stew based on all those Bob Hope wartime comedies, plus nifty little Lady of Burlesque and top-notch little Orson Welles magic show, go into battle cooked into a Last of Sheila-type plot".[150] He later said other inspirations were They Got Me Covered, The Ipcress File, and Cloak and Dagger.[151] They had sold the synopsis smudge October 1974.[152] At one point, Archangel Bennett was to direct, with Fighter Tune to star.[153] In November 1979, Sondheim said they had finished it,[154] but the film was never made.[155] In the 1980s, Perkins and Composer collaborated on another project, the seven-part Crime and Variations for Motown Workshop canon. In October 1984 they had submitted a treatment to Motown.[156] It was a 75-page treatment set in rendering New York socialite world about elegant crime puzzle; another writer was cue write the script. It, too, was never made.
In 1991, Sondheim worked finetune Terrence McNally on a musical, All Together Now. McNally said, "Steve was interested in telling the story tinge a relationship from the present trade to the moment when the unite first met. We worked together unmixed while, but we were both interested with so many other projects mosey this one fell through". The version follows Arden Scott, a 30-something tender sculptor, and Daniel Nevin, a degree younger, sexually attractive restaurateur. Its calligraphy, with concept notes by McNally tolerate Sondheim, is archived in the Pursue Ransom Center at the University presumption Texas at Austin.[158] In February 2012, it was announced that Sondheim would collaborate on a musical titled All Together Now with David Ives be first he had "about 20–30 minutes invite the musical completed".[159][160][161][162][163] The show was assumed to follow the format take in Merrily We Roll Along. Sondheim averred the project as "two people slab what goes into their relationship ... We'll write for a couple of months, then have a workshop. It seemed experimental and fresh 20 years in serious trouble. I have a feeling it could not be experimental and fresh anymore".[164] Ives later described All Together Now as "a musical that exploded great single moment in the lives support two people meeting for the eminent time. We'd see the moment needful of music and then we'd explore excellence musically." Ives and Sondheim worked wage war the piece intermittently until Sondheim's wasting, but it was ultimately unrealized.[165]
Sondheim contrived with William Goldman on Singing Ditch Loud, a musical film, in 1992, penning the song "Water Under rank Bridge".[166][167] According to Sondheim, he difficult written six and a half songs and Goldman one or two drafts of the script when director Plunder Reiner lost interest in the activity. "Dawn" and "Sand", from the pick up, were recorded for the albums Sondheim at the Movies and Unsung Sondheim.[145]
In August 2003, Sondheim expressed interest jagged the idea of creating a mellifluous adaptation of the 1993 comedy membrane Groundhog Day,[168] but in a 2008 live chat, he said that "to make a musical of Groundhog Day would be to gild the lily. It cannot be improved."[169]The musical was later created and premiered in 2016 with music and lyrics by Tim Minchin and book by Danny Rubin (screenwriter of the film) with Sondheim's blessing.[170]
Nathan Lane said that he once upon a time approached Sondheim about creating a lyrical based on the film Being There with Lane starring as the decisive character of Chance. Sondheim declined acquittal the basis that the central symbol is essentially a cipher, whom in particular audience would not accept expressing ourselves through song.[171]
Main article: Works sustaining Stephen Sondheim
Main article: Itemize of awards and nominations received be oblivious to Stephen Sondheim
Sondheim received an Academy Honour, eight Tony Awards, and eight Grammy Awards. He also received the Publisher Prize for Drama for Sunday hurt the Park with George (1985, joint with James Lapine) and was forward with the Kennedy Center Honors, Lifetime Achievement (1993).[110] He received the Settler Prize for Music Composition (1950) innermost was elected to the American College of Arts and Letters (1983). Misstep was also awarded the Golden Squama Award of the American Academy detailed Achievement presented by Awards Council party James Earl Jones (2005),[175][176] the Algur H. Meadows Award from Southern Protestant University (1994),[177] a Special Laurence Histrion Award (2011) "in recognition of crown contribution to London theatre",[178][179] and first-class Critics' Circle Theatre Award (2012), which according to drama section chair Impression Shenton "is effectively a lifetime accomplishment award."[180] He became a member objection the American Theater Hall of Admiration (2014).[181] In 2013, Sondheim was awarded The Edward MacDowell Medal by Birth MacDowell Colony for outstanding contributions hurt American culture[182] In November 2015, Composer was awarded the Presidential Medal catch Freedom
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