Sweeney Todd Live at the New York Philharmonic

Sondheim, Stephen

album cover

The Slasher Musical

Though it's written for the Broadway stage and intended to be interpreted by singing actors conversant in Tin Pan Alley, Sweeney Todd can also be considered an opera. Its significant dramatic moments unfold in music, and its ensemble passages contain back-and-forth volleys reminiscent of Mozart.

Stephen Sondheim wrote the music after seeing Christopher Bond's 1973 play, which is based on assorted folktales that have scared British children since the 1820s. As on his other theater projects, Sondheim developed an entire musical "language" for the show; for this, the music is tightly wound, in the manner of a Hitchcock thriller, with occasional respites for languid contemplation in the shadows. When the narrative hints at the gratuitous violence of low-budget slasher films, the music supplies a shivering string effect or sudden death-rattle symphonic chords.

Sondheim's textures have no equal in musical theater. When he intends for us to feel compassion, he finds a sly, and utterly perfect, way to bathe the theater in that mood. Similarly, his characters do not stride out and proclaim their motivations, as often happens in current musicals; instead, we learn about their desires and drives as they bounce off other people or their surroundings. Both Sweeney and the sailor, Anthony Hope, reveal their inner lives—Sweeney's dark and complicated, Anthony's sunny and uncomplicated—with their respective views of London. And in "The Worst Pies in London," Mrs. Lovett condemns her pieselling rival Mrs. Mooney in ways that make it clear this is who she'd rather be, at least from a mercantile standpoint.

This performance is an illustration of what can happen when opera companies adapt Broadway material. These re-creations, which began in earnest with Leonard Bernstein in the mid-'80s, often featured operatic voices in lead roles—and were generally dismissed by show people as inferior. This one is carefully cast, with opera singers in the supporting roles and two Broadway veterans, George Hearn and Patti LuPone, in the leads. LuPone brings perfect theatrical diction to her role, jolting each line alive without shattering the subtlety necessary for Sondheim. And Hearn, who'd done the original road production and was then considered past his prime, lunges into the Epiphany scene, when he embarks on his reign of terror, with a youthful intensity; where that early piece tends to exhaust singers for the remainder of the work, he grows stronger and more melodically confident. Both singers get nice support from the New York Philharmonic, which pumps Sondheim's themes to a mighty and majestic hugeness. Most Broadway scores would seem slight under such treatment. This one blossoms.

Genre: Musicals
Released: 2000, NYP (the New York Philharmonic label)
Key Tracks: "Epiphany," "The Worst Pies in London."
Catalog Choice: Passion, Original Broadway Cast
Next Stop: Various Artists: Send In the Clowns: The Ballads of Stephen Sondheim
After That: Adam Guettel: The Light in the Piazza
Book Pages: 724–725

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