Mr. Sondheim died suddenly on November 26, 2021,
at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut.
He was 91 years old.
Photo: Fred R. Conrad/NY Times
My original post from 2012 - I have not changed the verbs from present to past tense:
On September 15, 2010, eighty-year-old Stephen Sondheim,
one of the greatest theater composers of our time, joined other
legendary theatre artists who have had Broadway theatres named after
them – Ethel Barrymore, David Belasco, Edwin Booth, George Broadhurst,
George Gershwin, Alfred Lunt & Lynn Fontanne, Richard Rodgers, Helen
Hayes, Eugene O'Neill, Neil Simon and August Wilson.
Sondheim (born March 22, 1930) gave a speech during the unveiling
ceremony of the new marquee on the former Henry Miller’s Theatre at 124
W. 43rd Street. The signage on the marquee is Sondheim’s signature. The
restored neo-Georgian brick façade, which dates back to 1918, fronts an
entirely new 1,055 seat theatre placed below street level. The
restoration retained the “Henry Miller’s Theatre” letters, still visible etched in stone high above the Stephen Sondheim marquee.
It should not be lost on my
readers that Stephen Sondheim is a homosexual Broadway artist. Sondheim
did not come out as a gay man until he was 40 and did not live with a
partner (dramatist Peter Jones) until he was 61.
Update: In 2017 Sondheim married Broadway singer/actor Jeffrey Romley, who survives him. Romley is 50 years younger than Sondheim.
Sondheim wrote the lyrics for the landmark musical West Side Story
(1957) in collaboration with bisexual Leonard Bernstein’s music and gay
Arthur Laurents’s book. Laurents, born in 1918 (the same year as
Bernstein), died on May, 2011. Sondheim, the baby of that creative team,
was just 25 years old when he was hired to work on West Side Story. He followed with another smash hit with his lyrics for Gypsy in 1959.
Sondheim helped establish what is known as the “concept” musical, which sought to tell stories in fresh ways – Company (1970), Follies (1971) and Pacific Overtures (1976), for example. He changed the nature of musical theatre forever and has influenced subsequent generations of writers.
Sondheim is the winner of a Pulitzer Prize (Sunday in the Park with George), an Academy Award (for Sooner or Later,
as performed by Madonna in the film Dick Tracy) and multiple Tony and
Grammy Awards. He was the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from
the Kennedy Center Honors (1993), the National Medal of Arts (1996),
the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Gold Medal for Music (2006)
and a special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre (2008).
Sondheim (above left) with Leonard Bernstein in 1965.
Among the many shows for which Sondheim wrote the music and lyrics are Into the Woods (1987), Sunday in the Park with George (1984), Sweeney Todd (1979), A Little Night Music (1973), Anyone Can Whistle (1964) and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962). Five shows are anthologies of his works: Side by Side by Sondheim (1976), Marry Me a Little (1981), You're Gonna Love Tomorrow (1983), Putting It Together (1993/99) and Sondheim on Sondheim (2010).
It is a lesser known fact that he has composed film scores, written
songs for television productions and provided incidental music for stage
plays.
Sondheim is currently working on a new musical, tentatively titled All Together Now, in collaboration with playwright David Ives, whose play Venus in Fur (2010) is enjoying an extended run at Broadway’s Lyceum Theatre.
In 2009 the Signature Theatre, in my home state of Virginia, established a new honor, The Sondheim Award,
as “a tribute to America's most influential contemporary musical
theatre composer.” The first award was presented at the Arlington, VA,
theatre’s gala fund-raiser. Sondheim himself was the first recipient of
the award, which includes a $5000 honorarium for the recipients' choice
of a nonprofit organization. The 2010 honoree was Angela Lansbury, and in 2011 the recipient was Bernadette Peters.
Losing My Mind ("Follies" 1971) performed by Jeremy Jordan:
