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Broadway legend Stephen Sondheim passes away at 91, lawyer confirms
Stephen Sondheim the titan of the American musical is dead at 91.
Stephen Sondheim, a Broadway icon, died Friday at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut. He was 91 years old. F. Richard Pappas, his lawyer and friend, confirmed his death, which he characterised as unexpected. Mr. Sondheim had enjoyed Thanksgiving with friends in Roxbury the day before, according to Mr. Pappas.
As per The New York Times, Mr. Sondheim was the theater's most acclaimed and important composer-lyricist of the second half of the twentieth century, if not its most popular. He was an academically demanding artist who was always seeking new creative possibilities. His work combined text and music in a manner that benefited both. From his early successes in the late 1950s, when he wrote the lyrics for "West Side Story" and "Gypsy," to his most recent successes in the 1990s, when he wrote the music and lyrics for two audacious musicals, "Assassins," which gave voice to the men and women who killed or attempted to kill American presidents, and "Passion," an operatic probe into the nature of true love, he was a relentlessly innovative theatrical force.
The farcical 1962 comedy "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum," for which Mr. Sondheim composed both the lyrics and the music, received a Tony Award for best musical and ran for more than two years. In 1985, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for "Sunday in the Park with George." In 2015, he was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House by then-President Barack Obama.
As per NYT, in the 1970s and 1980s, his most productive period, he turned out a series of strikingly original and varied works, including “Company” (1970), “Follies” (1971), “A Little Night Music” (1973), “Pacific Overtures” (1976), “Sweeney Todd” (1979), “Merrily We Roll Along” (1981), “Sunday in the Park With George” (1984) and “Into the Woods” (1987).
