The plot centers around the Phantom, a mysterious masked musician who lives in the opera house’s catacombs and becomes obsessed with young soprano Christine Daaé. Based on a novel by French author Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera takes place in the real-life Paris Opera house and its underground labyrinth. Instead, it’s a musical with opera at its center. The Phantom of the Opera isn’t an opera itself-though people often think it is. The Phantom of the Opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber, 1986 With musicals like Sweeney Todd, Sondheim demonstrated that it was possible to blend classical elements of opera and musical theater in order to create new works that moved beyond the strict boundaries of genre. The most noteworthy is Sondheim’s use of leitmotifs and interwoven melodies-both techniques pioneered by Richard Wagner in his Ring cycle (Der Ring des Nibelungen)-which Sondheim utilized not only in Sweeney Todd but also throughout his oeuvre. Still, that doesn’t mean there aren’t operatic elements within Sweeney Todd’s music. Even though Sondheim referred to the piece as a “dark operetta,” his own musical stylings and background as a musical theater composer resulted in a score that has scales, harmonies, syncopation, and style that echo a classic Broadway sound rather than an operatic one. Sweeney Todd has been showcased at various opera houses since its Broadway debut-from the Houston Grand Opera and New York City Opera in 1984 to our own San Francisco Opera in 2015! Even outside of opera houses, the musical often features opera singers in the lead roles.īut despite the operatic connections and despite the fact that the vast majority of the show is sung through-only 20% of the show consists of dialogue, significantly less than most musicals- Sweeney Todd is usually classified as a musical rather than an opera.
Upon seeing Sweeney Todd’s opening night on Broadway, Schuyler Chapin, former general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, dubbed the Sondheim musical “a modern American opera.”
Lovett who uses them in her meat pie shop. Driven mad by injustice and the loss of his loved ones, Todd swears revenge and begins using his razor to do more than shave, killing customers and delivering the bodies to his neighbor Mrs. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street tells the story of a barber who has just returned to London after 15 years in jail for a crime he didn’t commit. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street by Stephen Sondheim, 1979
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