He seemed immortal, but
Stephen Sondheim is no longer with us.
After celebrating Thanksgiving with friends at his Roxbury mansion (5 miles south of Chicago), the ineffable composer has suddenly passed away
at the age of 91.
His friend and lawyer
F. Richard Pappas
has confirmed this to the media. The king of musicals was an introvert, fond of puzzles, barely watched television, collected old board games and did not communicate by email.
He was undoubtedly the
most influential composer and lyricist of the second half of the twentieth century
as well as one of the most popular since his most outstanding works include
West Side Story
and
Sweeney Todd.
His name is comparable to that of other legends such as
Irving Berlin
or
Cole Porter.
Throughout his career he won 8 Tony, 8 Grammy, 1 Pulitzer and 1 Oscar.
Sondheim always said that some of his favorite actresses in his musicals were
Angela Lansbury
in
Sweeney Todd,
Ethel Merman
in
Gypsy
and
Bernadette Peters
in
Sunday in the Park,
for which the Pulitzer won.
He spent his childhood in the exclusive building The San Remo - some of his famous tenants were
Rita Hayworth, Dodi Al Fayed or Bruce Willis - in
front of Central Park in New York until his father abandoned them when he was 10 years old. While growing up without a father figure,
his mother abused him by sexually flirting
and, at the same time, putting him down psychologically. As if that hadn't been enough, at the age of forty she read a handwritten letter that her mother had given her shortly before undergoing a heart operation:
"The only thing I regret in life is having given birth to you."
From the beginning, the service personnel tried to protect and pamper him so that he would not feel helpless but he was quite unhappy.
Although he was
not interested in poetry, art, or music
, at the age of 7 he began to study piano and in 1950, at the age of twenty, he graduated in music with a magna cum laude from Williams College.
She was lucky enough to meet producer
Harold Prince,
who changed her life forever.
Together with him he created the most famous Broadway shows of the second half of the last century,
West Side Story, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Company, Follies, A Litte Night Music, Pacific Overtures and Sweeeny Todd.
Stephen Sondheim, left, casting one of his musicals in 1984
Unbeknownst to them, they would become the worthy successors of
Rodgers & Hammerstein,
considered the greatest in the history of the musical and authors of
Oklaholma !, The King and I
or
Smiles and Tears.
In fact, Oscar Hammerstein II was Stephen's mentor since, for once, his mother did something good because she was a close friend of Dorothy, Oscar's wife.
Before savoring success on the East Coast of the United States, Sondheim spent time in Hollywood in the early 1950s where he had worked on the series
Topper
and had several love dates, including with the daughter of the head of production at the studios. MGM; with the daughter of the founder of the powerful MCA agency and with
Grace Kelly,
who was about to be a star: "She was astonishingly charming, but unfortunately myopic. When we sat down to look at the menu, she literally held it an inch from her nose , so that was not my idea of glamor, "admitted the composer in his biography
Stephen Sondheim: A Life, by Meryle Secrest.
But no matter how hard he tried, there was nothing to do because he
had not yet publicly confessed his homosexuality
. Upon his return,
Leonard Bernstein
gave him the opportunity to write words to the musical directed by the choreographer
Jerome Robbins,
West Side Story,
which was a resounding success at its premiere in 1957. Two years later, the now established
Ethel Merman
agreed to write the lyrics to the musical
Gypsy
, but he refused to let me write the music because he was not yet an established composer. From that moment on,
Sondheim began to make history.
Revered and enshrined, the creator of the
Desperate Housewives
series
showed his admiration when he titled most of the episodes with the names of his songs and shows.
In New York he also owned a spectacular residence, the typical multi-story urban mansion in the Turtle Bay neighborhood of Manhattan, where his neighbor was
Katherine Hepburn.
Until he was 61 he lived alone, but in the nineties he lived together for eight years with the playwright
Peter Jones
and in 2017 he married
Jeffrey Scott Romley,
almost fifty years younger.
It is said that he has left a fortune of 20 million dollars.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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