Stephen Sondheim, one of the titans of Broadway history, a composer and lyricist who has raised the level of the American theatrical musical, died suddenly this Friday in Roxbury, Connecticut, at the age of 91.
An intellectually rigorous artist who perpetually sought new creative paths, Sondheim was the most revered and influential musical author in American theater of the last half of the 20th century, and probably the best known. His career spans from his early hits in the late 1950s, when he wrote West’s lyrics. Side Story and Gypsy, until the 90s, when he wrote the music and lyrics for musicals like Assassins, giving a voice to the men and women who killed or tried to kill American presidents, and Passion, an operatic investigation on the nature of true love.
In between, immortal titles like Company (1970), Follies (1971), A Little Night Music (1973), Sweeney Todd (1979), Merrily We Roll Along (1981), Sunday in the Park With George (1984) e Into the Woods (1987). Some of these works have had equally legendary productions on Catalan stages, especially by the director Mario Gas (Sweeney Todd it premiered in 1995 and returned in 2004; A Little Night Music he directed it in 2000; Follies, 2012), also by Dagoll Dagom (Inland Forests, 2008) and the Musical Més Petit (Merrily We Roll Along, 2008) and Roser Batalla as translator. “He is a great man of the theater, he has a great command of theatrical language and he is a splendid lyricist. And a profound musician, who rereads the musical genre and elaborates very personal scores from very interesting stories. He is a fundamental and key character of the theater with music of the 20th century “, Mario Gas had said on the return of the barber from Fleet Street.
The first decade of his career he wrote on commission. Later he was already a composer and author, and his contribution to a show was always fundamental for the conception and final execution. He chose collaborators, most notably producer and director Hal Prince, orchestrator Jonathan Tunick, and later writer and director James Lapine, who shared his ambition to stretch the musical form beyond the limits of entertainment. Sondheim’s music is always recognizable, yet incredibly versatile.
His shows have a lot of ambition in substance or form, or both at the same time. Company, constructed from scenes with multiple couples and their common bachelor friend, is a bittersweet reflection on marriage. Pacific Overtures It explains the history of the modernization of Japan from the Japanese perspective. Sweeney Todd, a bloodthirsty tale about a vengeful barber in 19th century London, is close to Grand Guignol in tone and to opera in staging and score. The Frogs it combines Aristophanes’ Greek comedy with current political commentary.
Because of their high ambition, the seriousness of the themes, the melodic experimentation and the emotional discord, Sondheim’s shows, although mostly received with critical acclaim, were almost never popular hits. He suffered from the reputation that he did not write easy songs and that his gaze was austere, if not dark. He seldom offered audiences the effervescent and enjoyable musical experience or happily resolved narrative that his predecessors’ shows had accustomed audiences to expect. Nor did he offer them the opulent spectacle, hymn-score, or melodramatic storytelling that became the dominant musical theater style of the 1980s and 1990s with the arrival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s mega-hits from Britain. Cats and The Phantom of the Opera o Go miserables and Miss Saigon by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg, followed by Disney’s corporate productions. “I have always tried conscientiously not to do the same thing twice,” he had said for his 70th birthday. “If you run cross country you can’t get caught so many tomatoes. I definitely feel out of the mainstream. If I’m old-fashioned, I’m old-fashioned. Being a hipster isn’t just about being different. It’s about having your vision. of how a show could be, “he added.
They weren’t the most popular, perhaps, but of the dozen Broadway musicals he wrote, five won Tony Awards for best musical and six for best original score. He also has seven Grammys. Sunday in the Park won the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. revivals deserved awards: in March 2020 the return to New York of Company with a female protagonist for the 90th anniversary of its creator but it was postponed due to the pandemic. Finally last month, Sondheim returned to New York to attend the revivals of two of his musicals, Assassins and another Company production, starring Patti LuPone. In 2008 he was awarded a Tony Award for his lifetime achievement and in 2010, perhaps as the last award in show business, Henry Miller’s Theater was renamed in his honor.
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