Stephen Sondheim

“The Two of You”: Early Sondheim

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Sunday marks the 96th anniversary of the birth of American composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim (1930-2021). In 1952, long before musicals such as West Side Story, Sweeney Todd, and Into the Woods brought him fame, the 22-year-old Sondheim submitted a song to Kukla, Fran and Ollie, a popular television show involving puppets. Broadcast from Chicago between 1947 and 1957, the show was created for children, but it gained an even larger adult audience. …

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Sondheim’s “Pacific Overtures”: Five Excerpts From a Kabuki Musical

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Patrons of Broadway were met with a surprise when, on the evening of January 11, 1976, they packed the Winter Garden Theatre for the opening of Stephen Sondheim’s Pacific Overtures. Sondheim later called the show “the most bizarre and unusual musical ever to be seen in a commercial setting.” (Finishing the Hat) Directed and produced by Hal Prince, with a book by John Weidman, Pacific Overtures chronicles the 1853 American “gunboat diplomacy” of …

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Sondheim’s “Passion”: Barbara Cook Sings “Happiness,” “Loving You,” and “I Wish I Could Forget You”

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Stephen Sondheim’s 1994 one-act musical, Passion, is a variation on the beauty and the beast story. When the curtain rises, Giorgio, a handsome 19th-century Italian army captain, is making love to his ravishingly beautiful mistress, the married Clara. Their ecstatic reverie is interrupted when he tells her that he is about to be transferred to a remote, provincial military outpost. While separated, they continue to communicate through a stream of letters. At …

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Sondheim’s “Not While I’m Around”: A Chilling Take on the Soaring Ballad

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Today marks the 94th anniversary of the birth of Stephen Sondheim, who passed away in 2021. Sondheim’s multifaceted songs were always conceived with a dramatic situation in mind. Taken as stand-alone works, they become vignettes of character and drama. Not While I’m Around comes from the second act of Sondheim’s 1979 musical thriller, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, in which a vengeful barber gives multiple victims the ultimate close shave, …

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Remembering Angela Lansbury

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Angela Lansbury, the legendary star of film, stage, and television, passed away last Tuesday. She would have turned 97 on October 16. Beginning in the 1940s, the Irish-British-American actress earned acclaim on the silver screen with prominent roles in films which included Gaslight (1944), National Velvet (1944), The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), and The Manchurian Candidate (1962). Between 1984 and 2003, she starred in the popular CBS television series, Murder, She Wrote. Lansbury’s …

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Remembering Stephen Sondheim

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Stephen Sondheim, one of the giants of the American musical theater, has passed away at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut. He was 91. Sondheim was the composer and lyricist for musicals including: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962), Company (1970), Follies (1971), A Little Night Music (1973), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1979), Sunday in the Park with George (1984), and Into the Woods (1987). …

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Stephen Sondheim’s Homage to Ravel

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Artistically, a strong kinship exists between Stephen Sondheim and Maurice Ravel. In the music of Ravel, we often get a sense of cool detachment. Distance and irony open the door to the most intimate expression. Stravinsky alluded to the pristine craftsmanship of Ravel’s music when he called the composer “the most perfect of Swiss clockmakers.” As a student, Stephen Sondheim learned “that art is work and not inspiration, that invention comes with craft.” Perhaps …

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