Sondheim & Me

Paul Salsini

Sujets

• Musician

Informations

• Publié par: Bancroft Press
• Date de parution: 07 mars 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781610885942
• Langue: English

Extrait

SONDHEIM
& Me
R EVEALING A M USICAL G ENIUS

P AUL S ALSINI
Founder of The Sondheim Review
Copyright 2022 by Paul Salsini. All rights reserved.
Sondheim & Me: Revealing a Musical Genius
By Sondheim Review Founder Paul Salsini
978-1-61088-592-8 (hardcover)
978-1-61088-593-5 (paperback)
978-1-61088-594-2 (ebook)
978-1-61088-595-9 (ebook PDF)
978-1-61088-596-6 (audio)
$26.95
September 6, 2022
Cover photo © The New York Times
Cover & Interior Design: TracyCopesCreative.com
Author Photo: Barbara Miner

Published by Bancroft Press
“Books that Enlighten”
[phone]
4527 Glenwood Avenue
La Crescenta, CA 91214
www.bancroftpress.com
Printed in the United States of America
Other Books by Paul Salsini
NONFICTION:
Second Start
FICTION:
A Tuscan Treasury: Stories from Italy’s Most Captivating Region
The Ghosts of the Garfagnana: Seven Strange Stories of Haunted Tuscany
The Fearless Flag Thrower of Lucca: Nine Stories of 1990s Tuscany
A Piazza for Sant’Antonio: Five Novellas of 1980s Tuscany
The Temptation of Father Lorenzo: Ten Stories of 1970s Tuscany
Dino’s Story: A Novel of 1960s Tuscany
Sparrow’s Revenge: A Novel of Postwar Tuscany
The Cielo: A Novel of Wartime Tuscany
FOR YOUNGER READERS
Stefano and the Tuscan Piazza
Stefano and the Christmas Miracles
For Barbara, Jim, Laura, and Jack
TABLE OF Contents
Preface
Introduction
First Contacts
More Notes & Letters
The Sondheim Review
Passion
Sondheim on Passion
Passion Interviews
Talking with Students
More Letters
Company Revived
Forum Revived
An Unusual Encounter
Q&A with Sondheim
Follies Anniversary
On the Follies Score
Some Juvenilia
More Letters
Saturday Night Opens
Putting it Together
Sondheim & Television
Night Music Anniversary
More Letters
Phone Calls & Faxes
A British Interview
Follies Revival
Assassins Delayed
On Motifs, Pastiche, and Being an Icon
The Kennedy Center Celebration
Sondheim on the Celebration
Into the Woods Revival
Sweeney Todd as Opera
The Young Ones in Concert
Gypsy Revived
Translations
From Gold! to Bounce
Sondheim on Bounce
Moving On
Remembering the Legend
A Sondheim Chronology
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Book Club Questions
Index
FOREWORD
Those of us who had the great privilege of working with Stephen Sondheim know what a huge hole his passing created in our everyday artistic life.
There will never be enough written about this great artist, humorist, romantic, teacher, and friend whom we called “the Boss.”
He’s our time’s Gershwin and Shakespeare rolled into one.
He was my musical soul.
Through his work, he continues to influence everyone he comes in contact with.
This book is another tool to try to understand his genius.
And a nice little read at that!
PAUL GEMIGNANI May 2022
Paul Gemignani is an American musical director whose Broadway and West End theater career has spanned more than forty years and included more than a dozen collaborations with Stephen Sondheim.
PREFACE
I N 1994, I sent a letter to Stephen Sondheim telling him that I was a journalist and was about to publish a quarterly magazine devoted to his work. The magazine would include a lot of reporting, with news, articles about current and upcoming productions, reviews, interviews, and essays. As far as I knew, there had never been a publication like this devoted to a living artist.
Despite all the awards and honors and tributes Sondheim had received, I think he must have been surprised and confused by this audacious announcement. A magazine focusing on his work, and published in Milwaukee?
He apparently put his doubts aside, however, when he saw the first issue of The Sondheim Review —a photo of his new show Passion on the cover and extensive coverage inside. He said he would be willing to cooperate and gave me his contact numbers. Soon, I was calling him and he was calling me. We exchanged letters, notes, and faxes, and over the years developed an unlikely long-distance relationship.
He knew, I think, that, besides those who admired his work, the magazine would be read by scholars and historians. To make certain that every word in the magazine was accurate, he would send me notes—a wrong spelling here, confusion about a scene there. We dutifully printed his “emendations.”
Except for one memorable blowup (described later in these pages), our relationship was friendly, if distant, for the ten years I was editor. He never said so, but from his notes and our conversations, I believe he was actually pleased that The Sondheim Review existed and was reporting on his work.
Looking back at it now, I realize how extraordinary this personal experience was for me. I not only learned much about his work, but I also got to know something about Stephen Sondheim the genius.
In the following pages, I describe the years in which I connected with Sondheim, both before and during my time at The Sondheim Review. And there’s more. I didn’t want this to be simply Sondheim AND The Sondheim Review. I wanted it to be Sondheim IN The Sondheim Review. We reported on the many interviews, forums, and Q&A’s in which he took part during those ten years as he discussed how his shows came about and how he wrote them, sometimes in very personal terms. We reported on the many productions of his work and how they were received. We devoted space to long essays that explored the depths of his work. I’ve excerpted or summarized many of these articles so readers can get into the mind of the musical theater’s greatest composer/lyricist. Enjoy.
—Paul Salsini
INTRODUCTION
T O QUOTE Stephen Sondheim’s mentor, Oscar Hammerstein II, “Let’s start at the very beginning/A very good place to start.”
In 1965, I took a break from my job as an editor at The Milwaukee Journal and my wife and I went to New York for a week. Besides the touristy things, we saw Hello, Dolly! with Carol Channing and Funny Girl with Barbra Streisand.
And, because of my love for musical theater, I wanted to see the new Richard Rodgers musical. It was now five years after Oscar Hammerstein’s death, and Rodgers was striking out on his own. He had written his own lyrics for No Strings , but had sought someone else to write them for a new show, Do I Hear a Waltz?
The book, by Arthur Laurents, was adapted from his 1952 play The Time of the Cuckoo , which in turn was the basis for the 1955 film Summertime that starred Katherine Hepburn. In each case, it was the story of an American woman who falls in love with a married Italian man in Venice.
The program told us that the lyrics were written by somebody named Stephen Sondheim who, it said, had composed the lyrics for West Side Story and Gypsy and the music and lyrics for A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum .
Although I had seen a lot of musicals, the name didn’t mean much to me. Afterward, I thought the songs in Do I Hear a Waltz? were pleasant enough, but I mostly remembered the pastel scenery.
Much later, I read that Sondheim had agreed to work with Rodgers only because he thought Hammerstein, his mentor and friend, would have wanted him to. It was not a happy collaboration, with Rodgers frequently browbeating his lyricist. Sondheim said many times that there was no reason for the show to exist.
Seven years later, in 1972, The Journal sent me to New York for a two-week journalism seminar and I had time at night to see some shows. This was before the cleanup of Times Square and it was an effort to avoid the mess in the streets, the porn shops, the unsavory characters lurking in the shadows. I tried desperately to find a show where I could feel safe.
But across Broadway there was something that looked promising. The Winter Garden Theater’s marquee announced a show called Follies with an odd portrait of a woman with an ominous crack down her face. Still, reviewers were quoted as saying it was “breathtaking” and “incredible.” I bought a ticket.
The program told me it was produced and directed by Hal Prince, that the book was by James Goldman, and the music and lyrics were by Stephen Sondheim. That name again.
When the lights went down and the music came up and tall show-girls wearing immense headpieces descended the staircase on the stage, I knew I had never seen a musical like this before. I was mesmerized.
The huge cast, the aging movie stars, the spectacular set and costumes, the lush orchestrations, the movement so continuous that it seemed like a film—it was all magical.
And then there was the score of jaunty dances, pastiche numbers, and aching ballads that revealed the characters’ inner lives in sung monologues and dialogues.
Unlike so many others, this was a musical for adults.
There were so many layers to Follies that even now it’s difficult to explain. On the surface, it was a story of two couples attending a reunion of showgirls who had been in Follies revues. But more than that, it was a story of love and loss, past and present, failure and redemption, youth and aging, missed opportunities and unforgivable mistakes. In short, it explored the follies of our lives.
I couldn’t stop thinking about it and went home determined to find out more about this Stephen Sondheim. I learned that only two years earlier he wrote the score for the ground-breaking Company , a concept musical that had no linear plot but used vignettes to focus on a bachelor who is afraid to commit himself to others. It was nominated for a record-setting fourteen Tony awards and won six, including two for Sondheim for music and lyrics.
Somehow, I hadn’t seen it.
Soon, as he wrote show after show, everyone in the 1970s seemed to be discovering Sondheim. He followed Follies in 1973 with A Little Night Music , the bittersweet story of an aging actress seeking a lost love. Counting Company , that made three Sondheim shows in just four years.
In 1976 came Pacific Overtures , focusing on, of all things, the Westernization of Japan. It was done with an a