Meet the Composer; Stephen Sondheim; Part 1; WNYC

Meet the Composer, a survey of American music, of its breadth and diversity, and of the men and women who make it unique. My name is Tim Page, and I invite you to join us today as we talk with the American composer Stephen Sondheim and play some of his music. We'll be listening to several selections from his musical theater works, including A Little Night Music and Sweeney Todd. This program was made possible by Meet the Composer, Inc., through a grant from the AT&T Foundation. As both composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim has shaped a body of work that has touched, heartened and delighted a generation of theatergoers. Born in New York in 1930, Sondheim studied with Oscar Hammerstein,

second, the legendary Broadway lyricist, and with Milton Babbitt, the sophisticated contemporary composer, Sondheim broke into Broadway first as a lyricist, collaborating with Leonard Bernstein on West Side Story, Julie Styne on Gypsy and with Richard Rodgers. And Do I Hear A Waltz? His first show with both his own music and lyrics was the 1962 hit. A Funny Thing Happened on the way to the forum in the early 1970s, Sondheim became a major force on Broadway with his three Tony Award winning musicals produced by Harold Prince, Company Follies and a little night music company. A tale about the joys and woes of modern married life was generally considered the first Broadway musical without a plot. A little night music based on Ingmar Bergman film Smiles of a Summer Night featured what is now Sondheim's most famous song, Send In the Clowns. In 1975, Sondheim wrote the soundtrack for the Elaine Lannie film Stavisky, which we're listening to now.

Sondheim's Next Work, a noteworthy achievement with the 1978 thriller Sweeney Todd, considered by many to be his finest effort and a musical bordering close to the operatic. Indeed, Sweeney Todd was revived by the New York City Opera in the fall of 1984 and has since enter the company's repertory. Sondheim's most recent musical Sunday in the Park with George. What's the 1985 recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for drama? An honor rarely given to a musical. And now we meet the composer Stephen Sondheim. I think you must be the only person I know who studied with both Oscar Hammerstein and Milton Babbitt. Now, the contrast is not as extreme as it might seem at first, since Milton is a big fan of Tin Pan Alley and once said that is the composer he'd rather be than anyone else would have been, Jerome Kern.

But still, I think to somebody who just sees that fact down there in cold print, it must seem kind of interesting. And also the fact that your music reflects both of these different influences, as well as influences from music all over the world. I hear some minimalist music and the latest work Sunday in the park with George. There is obviously an interest in music from the east in Pacific overtures, yet it all remains your music. Let's talk a bit about your style and about how you fashion a work and how you deal with this real array of influences. Well, I'm an eclectic composer and I one of the things I like to do is write shows that differ from each other, which gives me a chance to experiment with different kinds of music. The minimalist in the East Room that you talk about here is enough, far as you well know, quite closely related. And it wasn't until I was into Sunday in the park with George that I realized that much of what I was doing, I had touched on in Pacific overtures. And of course, the so-called minimalist movement has its roots in

Eastern music. And I suppose in something the part with George is there were more tone clusters than that in Pacific overtures. But the point is that the style of each show I try to make refer to what the piece is about, what the style of the book is, what the story is, so to speak, what the atmosphere is. I like to do shows that have entirely different styles, particularly when one follows another. So the influences, it's not so much that minimalist music influenced me as I got into it. I've been an admirer of Steve Reich in particular and and glass over a period of years. And I found that as I was trying to musicalized what Seurat's work was like, I realized that the kind of so-called pointillist painting that he did, the application of many, many, many tiny strokes of color was not unlike the

application of tone clusters. That is to say, he would put pure tones of color next to each other in order to make another tone, so to speak, when often is what happens in tone close to music. As a matter of fact, as you may or may not know, not only on his color palette, his color wheel, the palette, that is to say, the the colors that were next to each other were the only ones he would mix together. He would never mix red with orange. You would mix red with red orange, which was next to orange. You would mix red, orange with orange and mixed orange with whatever color was next to that. And the array on the palette therefore retained its purity when it when he put it on the canvas, the only color he would mix in with the other colors was white. And I was thinking of writing the entire score an entirely diatonic that is to say, entirely on the white keys, so to speak, because in fact he used eleven colors and I was going to first use the 11 notes, including black notes. And then I decided it would be closer to what he was doing, really to try to write it all. Diatonic with that obviously turned out to be much too

schematic and also not quite true to the material, because in fact, what happens is that the music in the first act gradually resolves from some chromatic music into diatonic music. At the end, the Pacific Overture score was a matter of getting into the Japanese pentatonic scale and finding a Western equivalent for it, which I found through defines music. I was a composer whose work I play a lot as a kid and that kind of what I call Spanish guitar tuning is the closest thing I could find to the pentatonic scale. I sort of came upon it by accident and that's what opened the door for me and allowed me to write that score, because the problem, obviously, with writing quasi oriental music is that you end up with what used to be called chink music, the kind of thing that accompanied the melodramas on the on the screen that took place in Shanghai and points east. And it was so it was through Spanish music or through defy his use of Spanish music. I should say that I got to that one.

And little night music was influenced by Viennese and French waltzes and etc., etc.. Each score is an attempt to try to find a stylistic equivalent of the libretto, the dialog, the atmosphere and the story of the piece. But I am curious particularly about the various different influences in your early career. For instance, Hammerstein, I know, was really a mentor to you from a very early age. And then later you did work with Babbitt at the same time, I can hear. Elements of these two teachers in your in your work, but your work at the same time had at no point does it sound like it could have been by either of them. There's something very distinctively your own there, which you've taken off from. It's interesting you say that. I don't really I hear a little of Oscar, not a lot. And I had nothing of Milton. I don't eat. When I did meet Milton, he was writing a show. He's running a show from Mary Martin at the time, as a matter of fact, based on Helen of Troy and his musical style in his show music that is the songs he was writing was much closer to

say, probably to Sylvia Browne and Henderson, who I think were his favorites rather than the current. I would say it was more it had more diminished chords and less of that kind of Kurn diatonic purity and a sudden harmonic changes. Hammerstein taught me primarily how to structure songs. I have not been so much influenced by his style of writing. I was right at the beginning, but he stopped me from doing that after I'd written some lyrics for a show that I was writing while I was in college called Clim High. He said, You're writing the way I feel and not the way you feel. He said, Here's a love song of yours. Ever been in love? I said, No. He said, Then. Then you've got to try to imagine what this character feels like, not what I think being in love is like, because I was using all kinds of nature imagery and Oscar used a great deal of that. And I'm a city boy and it was all fake. You know, when I was using certain kinds of nature imagery was just I was imitating him

and he said something very smart to me. He said, you know, if you write just what you feel, no matter how limited you may think it is and as you grow, you'll get less limited, he said you'll be 90 percent ahead of the game. And I think he actually said 90 percent ahead of everybody else. He put it on a competitive basis. And that right away appealed to me. And from that day, and I suspect I was probably 19 at the time, I have always written exactly like myself as much as possible with as little shame as possible. And it's because he said that to me. And I think it's the most important advice he probably ever gave me was it sounds so simple. It's what every writer is told, either by other writers or in books, is to write like yourself. That's what write what you know really means. It really means write what you feel, not necessarily write about your own background of the incidents in your life, but write out of your own sensibility and not out of other people. We all begin by imitating other writers. Every writer does. But the sooner you grow out of that, the sooner you develop your own style. And so my influences, when I use them, they're very conscious. Somebody said it. So it was recently attributed to T.S.

Eliot, but I'm not sure he's the one who said it. And I paraphrase, he said, talent imitates, genius steals. And I think when you when you take something, you should steal it very consciously. And then if you have enough faith in yourself, what what he really meant was it has nothing to do so much with genius and talent as it has to do with confidence. If you if you have confidence in your own personality, you can't just steal. You could take a tire, even tunes, but you will be re harmonizing them your own way. You'll be changing things a little bit here and a little bit there. And I think if you look at the, you know, the early music of practically everybody who's been any good and indeed even in some of the middle and late music, you find moments where they you could say where they still. I think the important thing is to be aware of what you're doing. And the more conscious you are, then the more confident you are, I think. Well, let's talk a little bit about beginnings. One of the things that fascinated me in something in the park is it's one of the most

intriguing examinations of the creative process. I know. How do you begin a score or a musical? Do they all have separate histories? I'm sure they must. Or do you sit down and say, is there a germ that comes into your mind and then just grows? Or do they all follow separate commentary about the composing, the score or the beginning of a show? Because shows begin in different ways. That one began with just two writers, Jim and me getting together and inventing a show. We just wanted to write something. So we just talked over a series of weeks about the kinds of shows we liked and the kind of thing we wanted to write. And one night this idea came up of taking this painting, which suddenly struck us both as a as a stage full of people and examining it and seeing who those people were and maybe if they were related to each other in some way. Others have been adaptations. You know, many musicals, most musicals, particularly on Broadway, are adaptations. And I say out of the shows I've done, about half of them have been adaptations and half of the originals. So sometimes you start with a with a

preformed work. Usually what happens is I get together with a writer, but sometimes, particularly in my collaboration with Hal Prince, he brought Pacific overtures to me. He had been developing it as a straight play with John Wyman and then decided the two of them decided that it probably ought to be a musical. And so. It came to me in the case of a company, I brought some straight plays by George Firth, one of his first plays to how for professional advice on behalf of George. And I went because I thought how would be the best to advise George on whether they should be done on Broadway, off Broadway for television. Also wanted Hal to be to become familiar with such a talented man. And it was Hal saying, let's do this as a musical. And my saying, I don't know how it can be done. That started us off. I like very much to start projects that seem impossible. Sweeney Todd is actually the only show I ever started just by myself. I happened to see a production of it off West End in London at Stratford East. And in the case of Follies, I just got together with Jim

Goldman, who was a writer whom I admired a lot and who was a friend and said, let's write something. West Side Story was I applied for the job that had been begun by Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Laurents and Jerome Robbins. Gypsy, I was asked to do by Jerome Robbins again. And Arthur Laurents forum is a funny thing, the way the forum is again. I got together with my friend but Burt Shuvalov and said, let's do a show. So they each starred in a different way. Once the idea started a pattern forms, which is that we spend many weeks talking about the show and I say many, probably between one and three months just talking about the kind of show, what it should say, by which I do not mean immoral, but what the but the atmosphere with the air, the tone, the function of the music should be, then what I like to do is just collect themes. I like to try to find a general style, which I don't do by writing completed pieces and not even necessarily melodic ideas.

Those though, those do occur. But I'm taken with writing accompaniments that will reflect the atmosphere of the show. I think covenants are harmony, I think is the secret of music and coming into the secretive atmosphere maybe, and at least for me they are. So I usually am going after certain kinds of figuration, my instruments, the piano, and I write at the piano, though I try to run away from it as much as possible so that I'm not restricted by my own mediocre technique. But that's primarily what happens while I'm doing that. The librettist is starting to write. I generally do not write any songs whatsoever until I have a scene or two in front of me so that I can imitate the style of the librettist is using the style of diction and the approach to the characters. And so that I begin to understand the characters with a clarity that the man who makes them up librettist understands them. That way I can then enhance them. Then once I got the style, it's just a matter of tedious work like everything else, in a way that's creative. It was just, you know, you hammer away at it for a year or two and

then you finished the piece. And still is the 99 percent perspiration, one percent went. Absolutely. Absolutely. Particularly when it comes to lyric writing. Music, which is much more fun to write is, you know, because it's abstract, it's sort of easier to swim around. And it but words are simply not abstract and there's specificity gets you in trouble all the time. And that's just that's really tedious work. Lyric writing, where you began your career, though, as a lyricist. And it was only later that we discovered you were a composer. Yeah, well, I began my career in the so-called public eye, but I had been trained first as a musician. I majored in music. Lyric writing was a sideline that I'd say was something because Oscar did that I did and I liked doing. But what I wanted to do was write music. West Side Story, which was how I got taped as the weird writer was because I needed a job and the opportunity of working with those men. Bernstein, Robert and Lawrence is such enormous, both talent and experience and professionally as well as originality was just too good.

Actually, I was going to pass it up anyway because I didn't want to write just lyrics. And Oscar was the one who persuaded me to do it on grounds of experience. And he was the one who persuaded me to do Gypsy too, because I was supposed to do the music for that. And then Ethel Merman didn't want to take a chance on an unknown. And Oscar again stepped in and said, You've never worked with a star. And it would be very useful to know what it is to tailor material to a specific personality. He was right in both cases that were invaluable experiences. I paid for it in the sense that in many quarters I'm still considered a lyric writer and not a composer. Did you have trouble crossing over when? No, not at all. Not at all. Panting to do music. In fact, I began for form. Form was partly written before Gypsy came along. As soon as when I was over, I started work on form with with virtually everyone, Larry Gelbart and about six songs into that Gypsy came up. I auditioned for it, I got the job and then the kybosh was put on it and I went ahead and did it anyway. I do not consider myself primarily a lyric writer. I consider myself both the same time and if anything, primarily a composer, because I've studied it more and I started it earlier.

Well, let's talk about company because it's really a landmark show. It was the first major Broadway success to work without a plot. And we're going to hear the title song in just a moment. But tell us a little bit about the genesis of company. Well, as I say, George Firth had who was an actor and still is, but at that time was exclusively an actor, decided that he would write some plays and he wrote a set of one act plays. They were all plays that involved couples or in some instances, three people that say a couple and a friend. They were not the same couple in each play. They varied in ages a lot in media, but they had that pattern of being either two or three person plays. George didn't know what to do with them. I brought them to Hal Prince and he said, I think they might make a musical. And we sat down to discuss how to make a series of disparate one ACT plays about different people into a piece. We sat with George and over a period of months, the three of us devised a show that was based not on the couples, but on the third character that kept

reappearing in the various plays. And we realized that that was our central character and the couples should be the peripheral character. That seems like a simple solution now, but at the time it took us a long time to reach. Once we hit on that, we realized we had a form. And what we did was I've always been interested in that twilight zone between the book and the review. Prior to company, there had been reviews which were, you know, shows were just individual numbers or, you know, record date shows like hair. But there had never been a show that was really halfway between a book, a plotted book and a review and company was that it was a series of extended vignettes, but all involving people who existed in the same world and knew each other or didn't know each other, but knew somebody in common with each other so that it was the first plotless musical has a story, but no plot. And because it worked, although it's started a lot of people and got very

controversial reviews indeed, because in those days people were still, in spite of the Nouvelle Vague and all of that, they still insisted unformed plot, particularly in musicals. And so it shocked and upset a lot of people, but it worked enough so that other shows have been done since. And as a result, it's now a very accepted form. And in fact, now people are saying that anything with a plot is old fashioned. One of the reasons I did Sweeney Todd was to prove that nothing is old fashioned. You can tell a perfectly legitimate plot. But in those days, company followed by Follies, which is nothing more than a party with music that extends over a period of three hours or two and a half hours are in those days. I loved experimenting with that kind of form. So the overture is another kind of form of that sort. It's a scrapbook, really. And in a sense, company is a scrapbook. It's if you took pictures out of Bobby's life, that's the hero he was name. And that would be what that is, as I say, a follies with a party and specific objects with a scrapbook again.

But meanwhile, we did a little night music, which is plotted piece for high comedy. But it's absolutely a plot, not a complicated plot, but a plot. And Sweeney Todd, which is all plot. Hmm. That's really how it began. Well, let's listen to the title song from Company Now by Stephen Sondheim. Oh, oh, oh.

Mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy. Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba. That was something we wanted to say. You you drop by my not. Phone rings, door chimes in company,

no strings, good times, comms company. He late nights quick likes party games, the talks, long walks, telephone call. Thoughts, shared souls, bad private names, all. With LA, with LA. Filling the days with large seven highways somerby with my. Got crazy people. My friends, you know, it's gotten crazy people. Right. That's what it's all about, isn't it? That's what it's really about. Mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy, daddy, daddy.

So, listen, I'd like you to up your job, I need your advice, and I gotta get back to my. Start times company

strength. Attacks by Pakistan against a telephone call. Saddam way. I don't think that's what it's all about, isn't it? That's what it's mainly about. That's what it's really about. We've just heard the title song from company by Stephen Sondheim, and we're talking with

Stephen Sondheim today on Meet the Composer. Well, I'd like to turn now to what must be, I guess, considered your greatest hit, which would be send in the clowns from a little night music. Now, this is, I believe, the only song of yours which has not only been a become a standard in the show music repertory, but also actually made it into the top 40 for a while. If I remember, I always wrote a Song of the Year, won the Grammy Award for Best Film of the Year and surprised me. Very, very few of your songs can be excerpted like this. You tend to write in a more dramatic way, unified fashion, it seems to me. Why do you think this has been the song which really, I don't know. It's a fluke. I've written many songs that could have been excerpted. You know, I can I can name a dozen that could have been taken out of shows, but just weren't. Also, I must tell you, to send in the clowns was not taken out until two years later. It was made a hit made into a hit by Judy Collins in England. I don't know why she picked up on it, but she did. And it became a hit in England, so much so that Frank Sinatra made a recording of it.

And between the two of them, it became a hit. But it's the same kind of fluky thing that happened with, let's say, Louis Armstrong and hello, Dolly. If the right artist picks the right song at the right time and it hits the public consciousness, you get a hit. Rarely do songs from musicals, particularly the last 20 years, become hit songs, because ever since the advent of rock, the split has occurred between popular music and so-called show and movie. Well, movie songs now are oriented towards pop, but show music is not. And the result is that the top 40 simply does not contain your material anymore because popular music now is now about the performer and the arrangement and not about the song. And so it's there's no explanation of it. It's just a lucky happenstance, that's all. How do you feel hearing this song everywhere? I mean, it it's a song which is really ubiquitous. I happen to love it, but it must be very unusual to walk down the street and hear somebody whistling it or enter an elevator and have them putting it through in some souped up Muzak arrangement.

And it's such it's basically, it seems to me, a very bittersweet song. I myself felt that both the Collins and the Sinatra performances missed the point of the song, that there was a lot more irony than they let on. There is indeed. It's an angry song. And and you're absolutely right. I it was not the first time it had happened to me. I'd had hit songs before, but not with my own music. There were a number of songs and West Side Story that became very popular. Not again immediately. That was a show was done in 1957 and nobody recorded anything from the song except Johnny Mathis from the show. Johnny Mathis recorded Maria and Dinah Shore recorded tonight. And I believe those were the only two records made until the movie came out in 1961. Movie was a huge hit. The show was not a huge hit. The show was very moderate, but the movie was a huge hit and there was as a result, disc jockeys got pushed by the studios or the studio, rather, to play the songs. And after the public had heard the songs enough, a number of them became very successful, certainly tonight.

And Maria became and even somewhere it became enormously successful. So it was not the first time was the first time, although the only number of of funny happened, the way to perform comedy tonight had been played a lot as theme music on television shows and things like that. So I'd heard my stuff whistled or hummed before. It has no particular effect on me. I must tell you. I always looked forward to the day and when it happened, I had just no reaction at all. What does upset me or make me react is when I hear it sung wrong or hear the harmonies wrongly played and that exists a lot. And send in the clowns. There's a there's a chord in there that is wrong and the not on the Judy Collins record, but on the Sinatra record. And it's been imitated, I guess people instead of looking at the sheet music when they make arrangements, they listen instead of looking. And that kind of thing drives me crazy, even crazier than people taking liberties with tunes, which happens after a tune gets

popular enough that people try to find fresh approaches. And I've heard some of the clowns singing for instead of in three. And so you're quite a purist about the. Oh, absolutely. Well, sure. If you spend literally hours choosing notes and then somebody just comes along and uses I don't know, it's really upsetting. And on the other hand, if somebody is doing, you know, a free version, you know, that's a whole other matter. When it becomes kind of jazz riff, that's that's a whole other matter. When that is the point, when the song is used as a departure for an exercise in style, that's one thing. But when the song is sung almost correctly, it's it's crazy making. Well, we'll listen to it. Sung correctly now by Glynis Johns. This is from the original soundtrack of A Little Night Music Music by Stephen. Sondheim, send in the clowns. I will pay.

When I was in high, yes, when I saw. No one that I wanted was your. Don't you love the fast?

Don't bother. There he. Is one degree. Well, the cloud for old. Well, maybe next

year. We've just heard a performance of Send In the Clowns from a little night music by Stephen Sondheim and we're talking with Stephen Sondheim on Meet the Composer today. How do you respond to criticism of your work as theatrically, musically, lyrically, what have you? You have to deal with it on all sorts of levels. You've got people who will talk about your your writing as poetry. You've got people to talk about. It is theater. You've written film scores like the wonderful score for Stavisky. You've also and then, of course, just as music criticism. So you get a lot of criticism. Most of it, I'm sure, very favorable.

But actually most of most of its unfavorable. Really. Yeah, most of its unfavorable. What happens with criticism is very simple in the theater anyway, which is the criticism is really only valuable insofar as it sells tickets. First of all, it's journalistic criticism, which means that it's it's done at the moment on the spot. And even if there's something that would be helpful or valuable and it's too late to do anything about it. So it is valueless to the writers and valueless to the people connected with the show. Except insofar as I say it sells tickets when it's bad, it's it always hurts you to be vilified in public. And when it's good, you feel wonderful. The problem in New York or the problem anywhere really is that journalistic criticism is generally done by people who are illiterate, both in terms of language. And certainly in terms of music, I don't know how many critics there are writing for the theater who know anything whatsoever about music, but I'll bet you there are fewer than three of the major papers and magazines.

There are many who pretend to, but they don't. And you can see it all the time and the work. So it's extremely annoying to a composer to be criticized by. It's the only profession in the world, incidentally, that is criticized by ignoramuses. That is to say, ignorant people, people who literally do not know what a subdominant is. They literally do not know the difference between an arrangement and orchestration. They do not know anything about singing. And it's exactly, exactly as if they were criticizing plays in French and didn't know the language. They don't know the language. And therefore the criticism is truly foolish. It's therefore extremely upsetting to a composer to be criticized by people know nothing. Now, when I get bad criticism by music critic, at least I know the man is knows something about music and and whether I agree or disagree with him or whether I feel hurt or insulted, at least he has a right. To write what he's what what he's writing about is a lot of rights in one sentence, but

he has a right to give an opinion in that sense in public, the question of whether journalistic criticism has any value at all, meaning that it because it is, after all, written on one hearing, is a whole other matter. It is seems to me foolish to attempt to judge a work of any complexity on one hearing that includes a straight play as well as a musical, certainly a musical with any with any substance to it. That is to say, any complexity criticism should be reserved, obviously, for those cases where where a work has been heard a number of times or a critic. I like to make the distinction between criticism and reviewing. Reviewing is what you do on one night or one thing. And criticism is what you do when you look over a period of time, let's say, at an artist's work or even at one given work and study it. You know, at least I you know, I read criticism of, let's say, operas and certainly implied and sometimes even very specifically in the critics work, is the fact that he's been to rehearsals, that he has studied the score, and therefore, whether I agree with him or not or think he's a

fool or not, he has a right to give an opinion. And at least it's a considered opinion may be considered by, as I say, by a man whose whose brain I don't respect, but at least is considered. So the the major annoyance about journalistic criticism of musicals is that the people don't know what they're writing about at all. Now, it's also very questionable whether they know anything about the theater. Very few theater critics know anything about the theater at all. They do not know what the directors work is as opposed to the actor's work as opposed to the writer's work. They do not know what a lighting cue is. They do not understand anything about the theater. A few of them have even read any plays of, you know, of any wide variety. So that kind of thing exists in all professions. The nice thing about book criticism is that their authors are writing about authors often. You know, when you read the New York Times Review or the, you know, the any any of the any of this sort of periodicals are often its authors writing about authors and authors understand something about what writing is

about. And words are, you know, a common property of everybody. So everybody feels they have a right to express an opinion. Well, one of the stranger critical brouhahas that sprang up around your work fairly recently was when Sweeney Todd came to the New York City Opera. And I was rather baffled by all the people who seem to sort of falling all over themselves, trying to decide whether it was an opera, whether it was musical theater, what exactly it was, when it would seem to me that what really mattered was that it had vitality, interest and, well, frankly, it kept you on the edge of your seat throughout all it was meant to do. I'm delighted to hear you say it. It was only supposed to be a horror story. That's all I intended it to do, was to scare an audience that the entire purpose of Sweeney Todd has no other purpose at all. Are people like labels? It allows them to put things into categories, into pigeonholes, and it makes them feel comfortable. People, particularly critics, hate to be confronted with

something that they can't get a handle on, something that may be in some way new or that is at least unfamiliar. They don't like unfamiliar stuff, and I generally tend to write unfamiliar stuff. So they scramble around in this particular case for labels that make it easier to deal with. Obviously, there's no point in trying to label Sweeney Todd. But recently I've come to the conclusion mostly from seeing the Houston Opera production of it, that if it has to be labeled, then the category belongs in this operetta, it requires opera voices. Those say voices that are more trained, let's say, than the average Broadway musical, but not as highly trained. And I think that would be hurt by voices as highly trained as grand opera voices, because it is very much about text. And therefore, if anything, it could be called a black operetta. It didn't occur to anybody to call it an operetta for a long time because operetta is associated with crosstalk and people will sing. And, you know exactly and fashionable, you know, night music was called an operetta. That's mostly because the way they were dressed, you know, my music is so musical

and but it has a trio in it. So, you know, it seems to be a musical with some pretensions. But Sweeney Todd, I think I have recently stated a number of times that I think an opera is something done in an opera house in front of an opera audience and a musical or something in front of the musical house with a musical audience. And the reason it's not as glib as it sounds, because an opera audience brings different expectations to an opera house. The singers bring different approaches and expectations in an opera house than they do in a musical. And I think that's the important distinction between operas and non operas is where they are done. I really believe that when the medium the telephone was done on Broadway, they were musicals. They were sung all the way through. There was no dialog, but they were musicals. And even though they were done by voices, that particular Mary Powers, you know, could. Carry on in an opera house primarily, again, if I had to had to label it, I would have said operetta, which is closer to the so-called Broadway show area. But when they're done in an opera house, then there operas. I think that's the important distinction. It's an opera audience is interested in performers more than in the in the piece itself.

And that's a huge difference. Well, now listen to a selection from the RCA cast album of Sweeney Todd. Len Cariou was our Sweeney and Angela Lansbury as Mrs Lovett. We'll hear a fairly extended selection from the beginning of Act two Music by Stephen Sondheim. This is a selection from Sweeney Todd. Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please? Everything is when everything you'll spend. Yes, they are going to win. Ladies and gentlemen, that aroma in the breeze is like nothing compared to sucking the source of the gourmet's among you and telling you, of course. Ladies and gentlemen, you can imagine the rapture in store

just inside of this door. Daniel Sambo's, this is Lubbock's meat pies, savory and sweet. I had to see you like this is not mince meat pies, vitrine instead of. Do you think this will be a healthy one for the gentleman to be helping the.