Towering musical comedy master Stephen Sondheim passes away at 91

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Towering musical theater master Stephen Sondheim dies at 91

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Stephen Sondheim, the songwriter who improved the American musical comedy in the 2nd half of the 20 th century with his smart, elaborately rhymed lyrics, his usage of expressive tunes and his desire to deal with uncommon topics, has actually passed away. He was 91.

Sondheim passed away early Friday at his house in Roxbury, Connecticut, his representative stated in a declaration.

Sondheim affected numerous generations of theater songwriters, especially with such landmark musicals as “Company,” “Follies” and “Sweeney Todd,” which are thought about amongst his finest work. His most well-known ballad, “Send in the Clowns,” has actually been tape-recorded numerous times, consisting of by Frank Sinatra and Judy Collins.

The artist declined to duplicate himself, discovering motivation for his programs in such varied topics as an Ingmar Bergman film (“A Little Night Music”), the opening of Japan to the West (“Pacific Overtures”), French painter Georges Seurat (“Sunday in the Park With George”), Grimm’s fairy tales (“Into the Woods”) and even the killers of American presidents (“Assassins”), to name a few.

Tributes rapidly flooded social networks as entertainers and authors alike saluted a giant of the theater. “We shall be singing your songs forever,” composed LeaSalonga Aaron Tveit composed: “We are so lucky to have what you’ve given the world.”

“The theater has lost one of its greatest geniuses and the world has lost one of its greatest and most original writers. Sadly, there is now a giant in the sky,” manufacturer Cameron Mackintosh composed in homage.

Six of Sondheim’s musicals won Tony Awards for finest rating, and he likewise got a Pulitzer Prize (“Sunday in the Park”), an Academy Award (for the tune “Sooner or Later” from the movie “Dick Tracy”), 5 Olivier Awards and the Presidential Medal ofHonor In 2008, he got a Tony Award for life time accomplishment.

Sondheim’s music and lyrics offered his programs a dark, remarkable edge, whereas prior to him, the dominant tone of musicals was frothy and comic. He was in some cases slammed as an author of unhummable tunes, a badge that didn’t troubleSondheim Frank Sinatra, who had actually a struck with Sondheim’s “Send in the Clowns,” when grumbled: “He could make me a lot happier if he’d write more songs for saloon singers like me.”

To theater fans, Sondheim’s elegance and radiance made him an icon. A Broadway theater was called after him. A New York publication cover asked “Is Sondheim God?” The Guardian paper when provided this concern: “Is Stephen Sondheim the Shakespeare of musical theatre?”

A supreme wordsmith– and a devoted gamer of word video games– Sondheim’s happiness of language shone through. “The opposite of left is right/The opposite of right is wrong/So anyone who’s left is wrong, right?” he composed in “Anyone Can Whistle.” In “Company,” he penned the lines: “Good things get better/Bad gets worse/Wait — I think I meant that in reverse.”

He provided the 3 concepts required for a songwriter in his very first volume of gathered lyrics– Content Dictates Form, Less Is More, and God Is in theDetails All these truisms, he composed, were “in the service of Clarity, without which nothing else matters.” Together they caused spectacular lines like: “It’s a very short road from the pinch and the punch to the paunch and the pouch and the pension.”

Taught by no less a genius than Oscar Hammerstein, Sondheim pressed the musical into a darker, richer and more intellectual location. “If you think of a theater lyric as a short story, as I do, then every line has the weight of a paragraph,” he composed in his 2010 book, “Finishing the Hat,” the very first volume of his collection of lyrics and remarks.

Early in his profession, Sondheim composed the lyrics for 2 programs thought about to be classics of the American phase, “West Side Story” (1957) and “Gypsy” (1959). “West Side Story,” with music by Leonard Bernstein, transplanted Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” to the streets and gangs of modern-day NewYork “Gypsy,” with music by Jule Styne, informed the backstage story of the supreme phase mom and the child who matured to be Gypsy Rose Lee.

It was not up until 1962 that Sondheim composed both music and lyrics for a Broadway program, and it ended up being a smash– the bawdy “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” starring Zero Mostel as a crafty servant in ancient Rome yearning to be complimentary.

Yet his next program, “Anyone Can Whistle” (1964), tumbled, running just 9 efficiencies however accomplishing cult status after its cast recording was launched. Sondheim’s 1965 lyric cooperation with author Richard Rodgers– “Do I Hear a Waltz?”– likewise ended up being troublesome. The musical, based upon the play “The Time of the Cuckoo,” ran for 6 months however was a dissatisfied experience for both males, who did not get along.

It was “Company,” which opened on Broadway in April 1970, that sealed Sondheim’s track record. The episodic experiences of a bachelor (played by Dean Jones) with a failure to devote to a relationship was hailed as recording the compulsive nature of making every effort, self-indulgent NewYorkers The program, produced and directed by Hal Prince, won Sondheim his very first Tony for finest rating. “The Ladies Who Lunch” ended up being a requirement for Elaine Stritch.

The list below year, Sondheim composed ball game for “Follies,” a take a look at the shattered hopes and dissatisfied imagine females who had actually appeared in luxurious Ziegfeld- design revues. The music and lyrics admired fantastic authors of the past such as Jerome Kern, Cole Porter and the Gershwins.

In 1973, “A Little Night Music,” starring Glynis Johns and Len Cariou, opened. Based on Bergman’s “Smiles of a Summer Night,” this rueful love of middle-age fans consists of the tune “Send in the Clowns,” which acquired appeal outside the program. A revival in 2009 starred Angela Lansbury and Catherine Zeta-Jones was chosen for a finest revival Tony.

“Pacific Overtures,” with a book by John Weidman, followed in1976 The musical, likewise produced and directed by Prince, was not a monetary success, however it showed Sondheim’s dedication to unique product, filtering its tale of the westernization of Japan through a hybrid American-Kabuki design.

In 1979, Sondheim and Prince teamed up on what lots of think to be Sondheim’s work of art, the bloody yet frequently darkly amusing “Sweeney Todd.” An enthusiastic work, it starred Cariou in the title function as a homicidal barber whose consumers wind up in meat pies baked by Todd’s prepared accomplice, played by Angela Lansbury.

The Sondheim-Prince collaboration collapsed 2 years later on, after “Merrily We Roll Along,” a musical that traced a relationship backwards from its characters’ jeopardized midlife to their optimistic youth. The program, based upon a play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, just ran 2 weeks onBroadway But once again, similar to “Anyone Can Whistle,” its initial cast recording assisted “Merrily We Roll Along” to end up being a preferred amongst musical-theater enthusiasts.

“Sunday in the Park,” composed with James Lapine, might be Sondheim’s most individual program. A tale of uncompromising creative development, it informed the story of artist Georges Seurat, played by MandyPatinkin The painter immerses whatever in his life, including his relationship with his design (Bernadette Peters), for his art.) It was most just recently restored on Broadway in 2017 with Jake Gyllenhaal.)

Three years after “Sunday” debuted, Sondheim teamed up once again with Lapine, this time on the fairy-tale musical “Into the Woods.” The reveal starred Peters as an attractive witch and dealt mainly with the rough relationships in between moms and dads and kids, utilizing such well-known fairy-tale characters as Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood andRapunzel It was most just recently restored in the summer season of 2012 in Central Park by The Public Theater.

“Assassins” opened off-Broadway in 1991 and it took a look at the males and females who wished to eliminate presidents, from John Wilkes Booth to JohnHinckley The reveal gotten primarily unfavorable evaluations in its initial version, however a number of those critics reversed themselves 13 years later on when the program was done on Broadway and won a Tony for finest musical revival.

“Passion” was another extreme take a look at fixation, this time a desperate female, played by Donna Murphy, in love with a good-looking soldier. Despite winning the best-musical Tony in 1994, the program hardly handled a six-month run.

A brand-new variation of “The Frogs,” with extra tunes by Sondheim and a modified book by Nathan Lane (who likewise starred in the production), played Lincoln Center throughout the summer season of2004 The program, based upon the Aristophanes funny, initially had actually been done 20 years previously in the Yale University pool.

One of his more distressed programs was “Road Show,” which reunited Sondheim and Weidman and invested years being dealt with. This tale of the Mizner siblings, whose get-rich plans in the early part of the 20 th century lastly made it to the Public Theater in 2008 after going through numerous various titles, directors and casts.

He had actually been dealing with a brand-new musical with “Venus in Fur” playwright David Ives, who called his partner a genius. “Not only are his musicals brilliant, but I can’t think of another theater person who has so chronicled a whole age so eloquently,” Ives stated in2013 “He is the spirit of the age in a certain way.”

Sondheim was born March 22, 1930, into a rich household, the only child of gown producer Herbert Sondheim and Helen FoxSondheim At 10, his moms and dads separated and Sondheim’s mom purchased a home in Doylestown, Pa., where among their Bucks County next-door neighbors was lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, whose child, James, was Sondheim’s roomie at boarding school. It was Oscar Hammerstein who ended up being the boy’s expert coach and a buddy.

He had a singular youth, when in which involved spoken abuse from his cold mom. He got a letter in his 40 s from her informing him that she was sorry for bring to life him. He continued to support her economically and to see her sometimes however didn’t attend her funeral service.

Sondheim participated in Williams College in Massachusetts, where he learnt music. After graduation, he got a two-year fellowship to study with progressive author Milton Babbitt.

One of Sondheim’s very first tasks was composing scripts for the tv program “Topper,” which ran for 2 years (1953-1955). At the very same time, Sondheim composed his very first musical, “Saturday Night,” the story of a group of youths in Brooklyn in 1920 s. It was to have actually opened on Broadway in 1955, however its manufacturer passed away simply as the musical will enter into production, and the program was ditched. “Saturday Night” lastly got here in New York in 1997 in a little, off-Broadway production.

Sondheim composed occasionally for the films. He teamed up with star Anthony Perkins on the script for the 1973 murder secret “The Last of Sheila,” and besides his deal with “Dick Tracy” (1990), composed ratings for such films as Alain Resnais’ “Stavisky” (1974) and Warren Beatty’s “Reds” (1981).

Over the years, there have actually been lots of Broadway revivals of Sondheim reveals, particularly “Gypsy,” which had reincarnations starring Angela Lansbury (1974), Tyne Daly (1989) and Peters (2003). But there likewise were productions of “A Funny Thing,” one with Phil Silvers in 1972 and another starring Nathan Lane in 1996; “Into the Woods” with Vanessa Williams in 2002; and even of Sondheim’s less effective programs such as “Assassins” and “Pacific Overtures,” both in2004 “Sweeney Todd” has actually been produced in opera homes all over the world. A reimagined “West Side Story” opened on Broadway in 2020 and a rushed “Company” opened on Broadway in 2021 with the genders of the stars changed.

Sondheim’s tunes have actually been utilized thoroughly in revues, the best-known being “Side by Side by Sondheim” (1976) on Broadway and “Putting It Together,” off-Broadway with Julie Andrews in 1992 and on Broadway with Carol Burnett in1999 The New York Philharmonic placed on a star-studded “Company” in 2011 with Neil Patrick Harris and StephenColbert Tunes from his musicals have actually recently turned up all over from “Marriage Story” to “The Morning Show.”

An HBO documentary directed by Lapine, “Six by Sondheim,” aired in 2013 and exposed that he liked to make up resting and in some cases delighted in a mixed drink to chill out as he composed. He even exposed that he truly just fell in love after reaching 60, initially with the dramatist Peter Jones and after that in his ins 2015 with Jeff Romley.

In September 2010, the Henry Miller Theatre was relabelled the Stephen SondheimTheatre “I’m deeply embarrassed. I’m thrilled, but deeply embarrassed,” he stated as the sun tipped over lots of clapping admirers in TimesSquare Then he exposed his perfectionist streak: “I’ve always hated my last name. It just doesn’t sing.”