American music maestro Stephen Sondheim has died at the age of 91.
During a renowned career spanning over 60 years, Sondheim co-produces Broadway theater classics Like West Side Story, Gypsy, Sweeney Todd and Into the Woods, all these also became hits. His intricate and dazzlingly clever lyrics pushed the boundaries of the art form and he moved from unexpected subjects including A Murderous Barber (Sweeney Todd), Platus’ Roman comedy (including A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum), and Create fun creations. ) and a Pointillist painting (Sunday in the Park with George) by Georges Seurat.
Sondheim raises musical status, which was often considered casual and adventurous family fun, and was used to explore adult relationships in all their complexity. idiots And Company, which received an encouraging revival In London in 2017 and 2018, respectively, gave bitter accounts of love and life. His creations were also quite adventurous. While many music-theatre producers specialize in either Musician or lyricist, Sondheim excelled in both, After establishing himself on Broadway, he generally took charge of the music and lyrics on his shows.
Sondheim was born on 22 March 1930 in New York City. His parents, who both worked in the fashion industry, got divorced at the age of 10. He was taught by a great lyricist and librettist, Oscar Hammerstein, whose son befriended at George’s School in Newtown, Pennsylvania. His first musical, when he was 15, was a satire of that school, titled By George.
Sondheim said, Hammerstein taught him that in songwriting “the whole point is to underwrite, not overwrite because music is such a rich art form”. When Sondheim published his two-volume set of memoirs, he identified three principles for creating a “respectable song” for a songwriter. These were “less is more, content determines form and God is in the details”.
He was 27 when he had his first major hit with West Side Story, which moved Romeo and Juliet to the mean streets of New York City’s Upper West Side and was conceived as Jerome RobbinsMILF with a book by arthur laurent and by music Leonard Bernstein, Tonight, his songs for America and Nowhere will be loved by generations of theater-goers, but as a perfectionist and his own worst critic, he regrets a line from Mariah—”It’s dangerous how charming I find is” – in I Feel Pretty. “It wouldn’t be unattractive in Noel Coward’s living room,” he said. “I don’t know what a Puerto Rican street girl is doing singing a line like this.”
Also directed and choreographed Gypsy of Sondheim, based on Robbins’s memoirs. gypsy rose lee, with music Christmas Stine, The Roman Fares a Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum was the first Broadway show to feature both lyrics and music by Sondheim. It won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 1963.
Company, a bittersweet Manhattan musical after a man about town whose friends have all settled, earned Sondheim Tony Awards for Best Score and Best Song. It opened in 1970 and ran on Broadway for almost a year when Sondheim’s Follies also opened in New York. Follies, in which former showgirls look back on their younger selves, features a song sung by I’m Still Here, an anthem from showbiz survival. Elaine Stritch, Company and Follies are considered two of Sondheim’s best, and a revival of the two ran together in London in early 2019. National Theater Production Follies received a five-star review From Michael Billington, who said, “Never let you forget the astringent misery under the spectacle”. company, staged in the West End, changes the gender of its protagonist so that Bobby becomes Bobby, played by Rosalie Craig.
First staged on Broadway in 1979, Sweeney Todd—about a Victorian barber serial killer—added cheer and grizzly, most notably in Waltz A Little Priest, which featured “a piece of shepherd’s pie with the actual cowboy on top.” celebrated”. The anti-genre show has been performed at the grand Opera House and, in 2014, in a south London pie-and-mash shop. That production moved to the West End and then to New York.
Sondheim recalled early reviews of Merle We Roll Along in 1981 as “snarling and hostile”. He considered leaving but, “like a cold, it passed”. Four years later, Sunday in the Park with George brought the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
The 1987 fairytale mashup Into the Woods was one of several Sondheim musicals to be brought to the big screen. 2014 movie, adapted for the screen by James Lapin, who wrote the book for the original production, was directed by Rob Marshall and starred Meryl Streep as a witch and Anna Kendrick as Cinderella.
Sondheim’s shows and gala concerts were regular revivals and in 2008, he won a Tony Award for lifetime achievement. Imelda Staunton, who starred in productions including Gypsies and Follies, called Sondheim “the Shakespeare of the music world”. She said: “His stories will live on as long as Shakespeare’s because he speaks about people, about emotional difficulties, about the need we all have for love or recognition and to be noticed. So many Musicals are about happy things – but his music is about difficult things.”
Upon news of his death, producer Cameron Mackintosh issued a statement: “The theater has lost one of its greatest talents and the world has lost one of its greatest and most original writers. Sadly That’s a giant in the sky now. But Stephen Sondheim’s talent will still be here as his famous songs and shows will be showcased forever. Goodbye old friends and thanks from all of us.”