From West Side Story to Into The Woods, Stephen Sondheim's Unforgettable Songs

"Making a list of Stephen Sondheim classics is Sophie's choice."

"This inevitably invites argument."

Since the announcement on Friday of the death of the Broadway legend, the exegetes of the composer who revolutionized the art of musical comedy have been trying the impossible in the face of an abundant repertoire which was sung as well by Madonna, Frank Sinatra, Madonna, Judi Dench, Barbra Streisand, Sarah Vaughan, Julie Andrews, Catherine Zeta-Jones.

Send in the Clowns

from

A

Little Night Music

Few of Sondheim's titles made it into the top 50, but Send In The Clowns was an exception and earned the composer one of three Grammy awards of his career.

Performed by the original star of A Little Night Music Glynis John, the ride was taken over by Frank Sinatra or Barbra Streisand.

In this song, the aging actress Désirée regrets not having married her great love of youth Frederick who married another much younger and rejects her.

No One Is Alone

from

Into The Woods

The penultimate song in the play, this hymn sees the four characters from the surviving tales Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Jack of the Giant Bean, and the Baker pondering the dire consequences of their individualistic vows.

Finishing The Hat

from

Sunday In The Park With George

Stephen Sondheim imagines behind the scenes of the creation of the impressionist painting

by Georges Seurat.

His tribulations are paralleled with that of his grandson, also named George.

A cynical contemporary artist.

Sondheim and his faithful libretto author James Lapine received the Pulitzer for best theatrical work in 1985 for this reflection on the sacrifices, the delights and the cost of creation.

Johanna

from

Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Stephen Sondheim sets to music the serial killer barber, emblematic of English folklore and literature, who bones his clients to serve them again in his accomplice's pies.

The barber is looking for his daughter Johanna, ward of the judge who sent him into exile to be able to seduce his wife Lucy.

Somewhere

from

West Side Story

In 1957, Sondheim was still looking for himself when the playwright Arthur Laurents asked him to work on a new version of

featuring bands of young rivals from New York. Protagonists from European immigration on the one hand and Puerto Rican on the other. Bernstein would like a lyricist. Jerome Robbins will regulate the dances. Sondheim ticks a bit because he would like to write music. Hammerstein convinced him to accept.

registered from the first as one of the great successes of the musical. Stephen Sondheim disappears while Steven Spielberg unveils his remake in ten days. The composer had been able to visit the set and was delighted with the result.

Sooner or Later

, from

Dick Tracy

His only Oscar for Best Song, Stephen Sondheim owes it to Madonna as cabaret singer Breathless Mahoney in crime action comedy

and starring Warren Beatty.

Madonna's performance at the Oscars where she imitated Marilyn Monroe has gone down in history.

Being Alive

from

Company

Stephen Sondheim draws the portrait of an inveterate bachelor Robert through his interviews with five couples of friends and three of his girlfriends.

The thumbnails are not presented in chronological order but the set culminates on Robert's birthday party.

At 35, he understands that he no longer wants to live the rest of his days alone and needs complicity and love in his life.

The title was picked up by Adam Driver in Noah Baumbach's film about a bitter divorce,

Also in the

play

, the title

is another classic.

Meryl Streep, Christine Baranski and Audra McDonald have resumed with great success and humor, during confinement, this lament of middle-class women in their fifties dying of boredom.