Stephen Sondheim – A little night music (1973) – “A weekend in the country” (Original Broadway Cast)
Painting: “Mortlake Terrace” by Joseph Mallord William Turner. History (based on the Sondheim notes by Larry A. Brown): “A little night music” was created from Stephen Sondheim and Hal Prince’s desire to write a chamber function about romance and foolishness, an concept very first conceived in the course of “West Side Story”. For source material they decided to use Ingmar Bergman‘s film “Smiles of a Summer Night” (1956). Prince, Sondheim and book-writer Hugh Wheeler did not, even so, agree completely on the direction the new piece must go. Sondheim began composing dark music in keeping with the mood of the film, although Prince, in Sondheim’s own words “wanted the darkness to peep by means of a whipped-cream surface”. Prince conceived the show as “a type of Chekhovian musical”. “A little night music” opened on Broadway at the Shubert Theatre on the 25th of February, 1973, and ran for a respectable 601 performances. The show was met with excellent acclaim, receiving each the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award and the Tony Award for Finest Musical. Narrative: The libretto by Wheeler, writer of Bernstein’s “Candide”, is a delightful mixture of light comedy and remarkably significant overtones: a middle-aged lawyer, Fredrik Egerman (baritone), has lately married to a a lot younger woman, Anne (soprano), who has a genuine affection for the man but refuses to share a bed with him. As a result, Fredrik’s encounter with an old romance, the actress Desiree Armfeldt (mezzo-soprano), reignites many repressed …
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