Broadway legend Stephen Sondheim dies at age 91
Broadway composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim, who helped American musical theater evolve beyond pure entertainment and reach new artistic heights with works like West Side Story, Into the Woods and Sweeney Todd, died this Friday. at home, aged 91, according to the New York Times.
Sondheim, who has amassed eight Tony Awards — the Broadway Oscar — started early, learning the art of musical theater when he was just a teenager with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II of "The Sound of Music."
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a tweet this Friday about Sondheim: "One of the brightest lights on Broadway has gone out tonight. May he rest in peace."
Actress and singer Anna Kendrick called Sondheim's death "a devastating loss".
"Acting in his work has been one of the greatest perks of my career," added Kendrick on social media.
Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator of "Hamilton" and pupil of Sondheim, described the master as the greatest lyricist in musical theater.
Sondheim's most successful musicals have included "Into the Woods," which opened on Broadway in 1987 and used children's fairy tales to untangle adult obsessions, and the 1979 thriller "Sweeney Todd" about a murderous London barber whose victims are served as meat pies, and 1962's "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum," a "Vaudeville"-style comedy set in ancient Rome.
"I love theater as much as music, and the whole idea of reaching out to an audience and making them laugh, making them cry -- just making them feel -- is paramount to me," Sondheim said in an interview with 2013 to US National Public Radio.
Several of Sondheim's hit musicals have been made into films, including "Ways of the Forest," starring Meryl Streep, and "Sweeney Todd," starring Johnny Depp.
A new film version of "Amor, Sublime Amor", for which Sondheim wrote the lyrics to the song by Leonard Bernstein, which will premiere next month.
Text translated using artificial intelligence.
