Harold Smith "Hal" Prince (born January 30, 1928) is an American theatrical producer and director associated with many of the best-known Broadway musical productions of the past half-century. He has garnered twenty-one Tony Awards, more than any other individual, including eight for directing, eight for producing the year's Best Musical, two as Best Producer of a Musical, and three special awards.

Life and career[link]

Early years[link]

Prince wasCole was her born in New York City to Milton A. Prince, a stockbroker, and Blanche Stern.^[1] He entered the University of Pennsylvania at age 16, where he followed a liberal arts curriculum and graduated three years later. He later served two years with the United States Army in post-WWII Germany.^[2]

Career[link]

Prince began work in the theatre as an assistant stage manager to theatrical producer and director George Abbott. Along with Abbott, he co-produced The Pajama Game, which won the 1955 Tony Award for Best Musical. He went on to direct his own productions in 1962 beginning with A Family Affair and hit a series of unsuccessful productions.

He almost gave up musical theater right before he hit success with Cabaret in 1966. 1970 marked the start of his greatest collaboration, with composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim. They had previously worked on West Side Story and at this point decided to embark on their own project. Their association spawned a long string of productions, including Company (1970), Follies (1971), A Little Night Music (1973), Pacific Overtures (1976), and Sweeney Todd (1979). Following Merrily We Roll Along (1981), which was not successful, they parted ways until Bounce (2003).

Prince has directed operas including Ashmedai, Willie Stark, Madame Butterfly, and a revival of Candide. In 1983 Prince staged Turandot for the Vienna State Opera (conductor: Lorin Maazel; with José Carreras, Éva Marton). He directed two of Andrew Lloyd Webber's successes, Evita and The Phantom of the Opera. He was offered the job of directing Cats by Lloyd Webber but turned it down.

Despite creating a number of hugely popular musicals in the late 1970s and 1980s such as The Phantom of the Opera, Sweeney Todd, and Evita, Prince had his first artistic failure with Stephen Sondheim in 1981 with Merrily We Roll Along. Determined to bounce back, he started working on a new musical A Doll's Life with lyricists Betty Comden and Adolph Green that would continue the story of Nora Helmer past what Henrik Ibsen had written in A Doll's House. It was also badly received. Other commercially unsuccessful musicals includes Roza and Grind. Prince himself stopped producing and directing concurrently during this period because the process of financing a show had become so difficult.

Prince was the inspiration for John Lithgow's character in Bob Fosse's film All That Jazz. He was also the basis of a character in Richard Bissell's novel Say, Darling, which chronicled Bissell's own experience turning his novel 7½ Cents into The Pajama Game.

Harold Prince currently serves as president of the National Institute for Musical Theater. On May 20, 2007, he gave the commencement address at Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. In 2000, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.^[3]

In 2006, Prince was awarded a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre. The Harold Prince Theatre at the Annenberg Center of the University of Pennsylvania is named in his honor. In 2008 Prince was the keynote speaker at Elon University's Convocation for Honors celebration.

Prince co-directed, with Susan Stroman, the new musical Paradise Found. The musical features the music of Johann Strauss II as adapted by Jonathan Tunick with lyrics by Ellen Fitzhugh. The book was written by Richard Nelson, based on Joseph Roth’s novel The Tale of the 1002nd Night. The musical premiered at the Menier Chocolate Factory in London on May 19, 2010 and closed on June 26, and starred Mandy Patinkin.^[4][5]

Personal life[link]

Prince married Judy Chaplin, daughter of Saul Chaplin, on October 26, 1962. They are parents of Daisy Prince, a director, and Charles Prince, a conductor. Actor Alexander Chaplin, best known as "James Hobert" on Spin City, is Prince's son-in-law.^[2]

Work[link]

Stage productions[link]

Filmography[link]

• Something for Everyone (1970) - director
• A Little Night Music (film) (1977) - director

Awards and nominations[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Prince, Harold, Contradictions: Notes on twenty-six years in the theatre, Dodd, Mead ISBN 0-396-07019-1 (1974 autobiography)
• Prince, Harold (1993), Grandchild of Kings, Samuel French,
• Hirsch, Foster (1989, rev 2005), Harold Prince and the American Musical Theatre, Applause Books, (with Prince providing extensive interviews and the foreword)
• Ilson, Carol (1989), Harold Prince: From Pajama Game To Phantom of the Opera And Beyond, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-8357-1961-8
• Ilson, Carol (2000), Harold Prince: A Director's Journey, Limelight Editions,
• Napoleon, Davi, Chelsea on the Edge: The Adventures of an American Theater, Iowa State University Press, (Includes a preface by Prince and a full chapter about the production of Candide.) .
• Brunet, Daniel; Angel Esquivel Rios, Miguel; and Geraths, Armin (2006), Creating the "New Musical": Harold Prince in Berlin, Peter Lang Publishing,
• Thelen, Lawrence (1999), The Show Makers: Great Directors of the American Musical Theatre, Routledge,
• Guernsey, Otis L. (Editor) (1985), Broadway Song and Story: Playwrights/Lyricists/Composers Discuss Their Hits, Dodd Mead,

References[link]

External links[link]

• Harold Prince at the Internet Broadway Database
• Harold Prince at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• Harold Prince at the Internet Movie Database
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Harold Prince on Charlie Rose
• Works by or about Harold Prince in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Harold Prince collected news and commentary at The New York Times
• Harold Prince Downstage Center interview at American Theatre Wing.org, May 2008
• Harold Prince papers, 1954-1999. Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York Public Library.
• Ruth Mitchell Papers, Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York Public Library
• Harold Prince scores, 1955-1983. Music Division, New York Public Library.
• Interview with Hal Prince by Bruce Duffie, November 11, 1982

Oscar Hammerstein II
Hammerstein watching hopefuls being auditioned on stage at the St. James Theatre
Background information
Birth name	Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein
Born	(1895-07-12)July 12, 1895 New York, NY
Died	August 23, 1960(1960-08-23) (aged 65) Doylestown, Pennsylvania
Genres	Musical theatre, popular
Occupations	songwriter, producer, director

Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein II ( /ˈhæmərstaɪn/; July 12, 1895 – August 23, 1960) was an American librettist, theatrical producer, and (usually uncredited) theatre director of musicals for almost forty years. Hammerstein won eight Tony Awards and was twice awarded an Academy Award for "Best Original Song". Many of his songs are standard repertoire for singers and jazz musicians. He co-wrote 850 songs. Hammerstein was the lyricist and playwright in his partnerships; his collaborators wrote the music. Hammerstein collaborated with composers Jerome Kern, Vincent Youmans, Rudolf Friml and Sigmund Romberg, but his most famous collaboration was with Richard Rodgers.

Early life[link]

Hammerstein was born Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein in New York City, the son of Alice (née Nimmo) and William Hammerstein.^[1] His grandfather was German-born Jewish theater impresario Oscar Hammerstein I, and his mother was the daughter of Scottish and English parents.^[2] Hammerstein was raised an Episcopalian.^{[citation needed]}

Although Hammerstein's father managed the Victoria Theatre for Oscar Hammerstein I and was a producer of vaudeville shows (he is generally credited with inventing the "pie-in-the-face" routine), he was opposed to his son's desire to participate in the arts.^[3] Hammerstein attended Columbia University from 1912–1916 and studied at Columbia Law School until 1917.^[4] It was not until his father's death on June 10, 1914, that he participated in his first play with the Varsity Show, entitled On Your Way. Throughout the rest of his college career, Hammerstein wrote and performed in several Varsity Shows.

Early career[link]

Hammerstein with his wife, photographed aboard a ship.

After quitting law school to pursue theatre, Hammerstein began his first professional collaboration, with Herbert Stothart, Otto Harbach and Frank Mandel.^[5] He began as an apprentice and went on to form a 20-year collaboration with Harbach. Out of this collaboration came his first musical, Always You, for which he wrote the book and lyrics. It opened on Broadway in 1921.

Throughout the next forty years, Hammerstein teamed with many other composers, including Jerome Kern, with whom Hammerstein enjoyed a highly successful collaboration. In 1927, Kern and Hammerstein had their biggest hit, Show Boat, which is often revived and is still considered one of the masterpieces of the American musical theatre. "Here we come to a completely new genre – the musical play as distinguished from musical comedy. Now... the play was the thing, and everything else was subservient to that play. Now... came complete integration of song, humor and production numbers into a single and inextricable artistic entity."^[6]

Other Kern-Hammerstein musicals include Sweet Adeline, Music In the Air, Three Sisters, and Very Warm for May. Hammerstein also collaborated with Vincent Youmans (Wildflower), Rudolf Friml (Rose-Marie), and Sigmund Romberg (The Desert Song and The New Moon).^[7]

Rodgers and Hammerstein[link]

Hammerstein's most successful and sustained collaboration began when he teamed up with Richard Rodgers to write a musical adaptation of the play Green Grow the Lilacs.^[8] Rodgers' first partner, Lorenz Hart, originally planned to collaborate with Rodgers on this piece, but his alcoholism had become out of control, and he was unable to write. Hart was also not certain that the idea had much merit, and the two therefore separated. The adaptation became the first Rodgers and Hammerstein collaboration, entitled Oklahoma!, which opened on Broadway in 1943. It furthered the revolution begun by Show Boat, by thoroughly integrating all the aspects of musical theatre, with the songs and dances arising out of and further developing the plot and characters. William A. Everett and Paul R. Laird wrote that this was a "show, that, like 'Show Boat', became a milestone, so that later historians writing about important moments in twentieth-century theatre would begin to identify eras according to their relationship to 'Oklahoma.'^[9]" After Oklahoma!, Rodgers and Hammerstein were the most important contributors to the musical-play form – with such masterworks as Carousel, The King and I and South Pacific. The examples they set in creating vital plays, often rich with social thought, provided the necessary encouragement for other gifted writers to create musical plays of their own".^[6]

The partnership went on to produce these and other Broadway musicals such as Allegro, Me & Juliet, Pipe Dream, Flower Drum Song, and The Sound of Music, as well as the musical film State Fair (and its stage adaptation of the same name), and the television musical Cinderella, all featured in the revue A Grand Night for Singing. Hammerstein also wrote the book and lyrics for Carmen Jones, an adaptation of Georges Bizet's opera Carmen with an all-black cast that became a 1943 Broadway musical and a 1954 film.

Death[link]

Hammerstein died of stomach cancer at his home in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, at 65,^[10] shortly after the opening of The Sound of Music on Broadway. The final song he wrote was "Edelweiss", which was added during rehearsals near the end of the second act.^[11][12] This was not an Austrian folk song but had been written specifically for the musical.^[13] After his death, The Sound of Music was made into the hit 1965 film adaptation, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

The lights of Times Square^[14] were turned off for one minute, and London's West End^[15] lights were dimmed in recognition of his contribution to the musical. He was cremated, and his ashes were buried at the Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.^[16] A memorial plaque was unveiled at Southwark Cathedral, England, on May 24, 1961.^[17] He was survived by his second wife Dorothy (Blanchard) Jacobson (m. May 13, 1929) and his three children, William Hammerstein and Alice Hammerstein Mathias by first wife Myra Finn, and James Hammerstein by Blanchard. Dorothy, b. June 7, 1899, died Aug. 3, 1987 in New York.

Reputation[link]

He was probably the best "book writer" in Broadway history^[18][19] – he made the story, not the songs or the stars, central to the musical and brought musical theater to full maturity as an art form. According to Stephen Sondheim, "What few people understand is that Oscar's big contribution to the theater was as a theoretician, as a Peter Brook, as an innovator. People don't understand how experimental Show Boat and Oklahoma! felt at the time they were done. Oscar is not about the 'lark that is learning to pray' – that's easy to make fun of. He's about Allegro."^[20]

His reputation for being sentimental is based largely on the movie versions of the musicals, especially The Sound of Music, in which a song sung by those in favour of reaching an accommodation with the Nazis, "No Way to Stop It", was cut. As recent revivals of Show Boat, Oklahoma!, Carousel, and The King and I in London and New York show, Hammerstein was one of the more tough-minded and socially conscious American musical theater artists. According to Richard Kislan, "The shows of Rodgers and Hammerstein were the product of sincerity. In the light of criticism directed against them and their universe of sweetness and light, it is important to understand that they believed sincerely in what they wrote."^[21] According to Marc Bauch, "The Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals are romantic musical plays. Love is important."^[22] According to The Rogers and Hammerstein Story by Stanley Green, "For three minutes, on the night of September first, the entire Times Square area in New York City was blacked out in honor of the man who had done so much to light up that particular part of the world. From 8:57 to 9:00pm, every neon sign and every lightbulb was turned off and all traffic was halted between 42nd Street and 53rd Street, and between 8th Ave and the Avenue of the Americas. A crowd of 5,000 people, many with heads bowed, assembled at the base of the statue of Father Duffy on Times Square where two trumpeters blew taps. It was the most complete blackout on Broadway since World War II, and the greatest tribute of its kind ever paid to one man."

Songs[link]

Hammerstein contributed the lyrics to 850 songs, according to The Complete Lyrics of Oscar Hammerstein II, edited by Amy Asch.^[23] Some well-known songs are "Ol' Man River", "Can't Help Lovin' That Man" and "Make Believe" from Show Boat, "Indian Love Call" from Rose-Marie, "People Will Say We're in Love" and "Oklahoma" (which has been the official state song of Oklahoma since 1953) from Oklahoma!, "Some Enchanted Evening", from South Pacific, "Getting to Know You" and Shall We Dance from The King and I, and the title song as well as "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" from The Sound of Music.

Several albums of Hammerstein's musicals were named to the "Songs of the Century" list as compiled by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the National Endowment for the Arts, and Scholastic Corporation:

• The Sound of Music — # 36
• Oklahoma! — # 66
• South Pacific — # 224
• The King and I — # 249
• Show Boat — # 312

Awards and legacy[link]

Hammerstein won two Oscars for best original song—in 1941 for "The Last Time I Saw Paris" in the film Lady Be Good, and in 1945 for "It Might as Well Be Spring" in State Fair. In 1950, the team of Rodgers and Hammerstein received The Hundred Year Association of New York's Gold Medal Award "in recognition of outstanding contributions to the City of New York."

Hammerstein won eight Tony Awards, six for lyrics or book, and two as producer of the Best Musical (South Pacific and The Sound of Music). Rodgers and Hammerstein began writing together before the era of the Tonys: Oklahoma! opened in 1943 and Carousel in 1945, and the Tony Awards were not awarded until 1947. Rodgers and Hammerstein received a special Pulitzer Prize for Oklahoma! in 1944.^[24] The Oscar Hammerstein II Center for Theater Studies at Columbia University was established in 1981 with a $1 million gift from his family.^[25]

His advice and work influenced Stephen Sondheim, a friend of the Hammerstein family from childhood. Sondheim has attributed his success in theater directly to Hammerstein's influence and guidance.^[26]

The Oscar Hammerstein Award for Lifetime Achievement in Musical Theatre is presented annually. The York Theatre Company in New York City is the Administrator of the award.^[27] The 2009 awardees are Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick.^[28] Past awardees are composers such as Stephen Sondheim and performers such as Carol Channing.^[29] The 2010 award will go to Thomas Meehan.

References[link]

See also[link]

Biography portal

• Richard Rodgers
• Rodgers and Hammerstein

Further reading[link]

• Bauch, Marc (2003). The American Musical. ISBN 3-8288-8458-X. 
• Fordin, Hugh (1995). Getting to Know Him:A Biography of Oscar Hammerstein II. Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-306-80668-1. 
• Hischak, Thomas S. (2007). The Rodgers and Hammerstein Encyclopedia. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 0-313-34140-0. 
• Kislan, Richard (1995). The Musical: A Look at the American Musical Theater. Hal Leonard Corporation. ISBN 1-55783-217-X. 

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Oscar Hammerstein II

• Oscar Hammerstein II at the Internet Broadway Database
• Oscar Hammerstein II at the Internet Movie Database

• Musicals by Rodgers and Hammerstein
• Biography of Oscar Hammerstein II at RNH Official Site
• Oscar Hammerstein II interviewed by Mike Wallace on The Mike Wallace Interview March 15, 1958

Beverly Sills in 1956, photo by Carl Van Vechten

Beverly Sills (May 25, 1929 – July 2, 2007) was an American operatic soprano whose peak career was between the 1950s and 1970s. In her prime she was the only real rival to Joan Sutherland as the leading bel canto stylist.^[1]

Although she sang a repertoire from Handel and Mozart to Puccini, Massenet and Verdi, she was known for her performances in coloratura soprano roles in live opera and recordings. Sills was largely associated with the operas of Donizetti, of which she performed and recorded many roles. Her signature roles include the title role in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, the title role in Massenet's Manon, Marie in Donizetti's La fille du régiment, the three heroines in Offenbach's Les contes d'Hoffmann, Rosina in Rossini's The Barber of Seville, Violetta in Verdi's La traviata, and most notably Elisabetta in Roberto Devereux.

After retiring from singing in 1980, she became the general manager of the New York City Opera. In 1994, she became the Chairman of Lincoln Center and then, in 2002, of the Metropolitan Opera, stepping down in 2005. Sills lent her celebrity to further her charity work for the prevention and treatment of birth defects.

Biography[link]

Sills was born Belle Miriam Silverman in Brooklyn, New York to Shirley Bahn (née Sonia Markovna), a musician, and Morris Silverman, an insurance broker.^[2] Her parents were Jewish immigrants from Odessa, Ukraine (then part of Russia) and Bucharest, Romania. She was raised in Brooklyn, where she was known, among friends, as "Bubbles" Silverman. As a child, she spoke Yiddish, Russian, Romanian, French and English.^[3] She attended Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, as well as Manhattan's Professional Children's School.^[4]

At the age of three, Sills won a "Miss Beautiful Baby" contest, in which she sang "The Wedding of Jack and Jill". Beginning at age four, she performed professionally on the Saturday morning radio program, "Rainbow House", as "Bubbles" Silverman. Sills began taking singing lessons with Estelle Liebling at the age of seven and a year later sang in the short film Uncle Sol Solves It (filmed August 1937, released June 1938 by Educational Pictures), by which time she had adopted her stage name, Beverly Sills. Liebling encouraged her to audition for CBS Radio's Major Bowes' Amateur Hour, and on October 26, 1939 at the age of 10, Sills was the winner of that week's program. Bowes then asked her to appear on his Capitol Family Hour, a weekly variety show. Her first appearance was on November 19, 1939, the 17th anniversary of the show, and she appeared frequently on the program thereafter.^[5]

In 1945, Sills made her professional stage debut with a Gilbert and Sullivan touring company produced by Jacob J. Shubert, playing twelve cities in the US and Canada, offering seven different Gilbert and Sullivan operas. In her 1987 autobiography, she credits that tour with helping to develop the comic timing she soon became famous for: "I played the title role in Patience, and I absolutely loved the character, because Patience is a very funny, flaky girl.... I played her as a dumb Dora all the way through and really had fun with the role.... My Patience grew clumsier and clumsier with each performance, and audiences seemed to like her.... I found that I had a gift for slapstick humor, and it was fun to exercise it onstage."^[6] Sills sang in light operas for several more years.

On July 9, 1946, Sills appeared as a contestant on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts (radio). She sang under the pseudonym of "Vicki Lynn", as she was under contract to Shubert. Shubert did not want Godfrey to be able to say he had discovered "Beverly Sills" if she won the contest (although she did not ultimately win). Sills sang "Romany Life" from Victor Herbert's The Fortune Teller.

In 1947, she made her operatic stage debut as the Spanish gypsy Frasquita in Bizet's Carmen with the Philadelphia Civic Grand Opera Company. She toured North America with the Charles Wagner Opera Company, in the fall of 1951 singing Violetta in La traviata and, in the fall of 1952, singing Micaëla in Carmen. On September 15, 1953, she made her debut with the San Francisco Opera as Helen of Troy in Boito's Mefistofele and also sang Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni the same season. In a step outside of the repertoire she is commonly associated with, Sills gave four performances of the title role of Aida in July 1954 in Salt Lake City. On October 29, 1955, she first appeared with the New York City Opera as Rosalinde in Johann Strauss II's Die Fledermaus, which received critical praise. As early as 1956 she performed before an audience of over 13,000 guests at the landmark Lewisohn Stadium with the noted operatic conductor Alfredo Antonini in an aria from Vincenzo Bellini's I puritani.^[7] Her reputation expanded with her performance of the title role in the New York premiere of Douglas Moore's The Ballad of Baby Doe in 1958.

On November 17, 1956, Sills married journalist Peter Greenough, of the Cleveland, Ohio newspaper The Plain Dealer and moved to Cleveland. She had two children with Greenough, Meredith ("Muffy") in 1959 and Peter, Jr. ("Bucky") in 1961. Muffy is profoundly deaf and has multiple sclerosis and Peter is severely mentally disabled. Sills restricted her performing schedule to care for her children.

In 1960, Sills and her family moved to Milton, Massachusetts, near Boston. In 1962, Sills sang the title role in Massenet's Manon with the Opera Company of Boston, the first of many roles for opera director Sarah Caldwell. Manon continued to be one of Sills' signature roles throughout most of her career. In January 1964, she sang her first Queen of the Night in Mozart's The Magic Flute for Caldwell. Although Sills drew critical praise for her coloratura technique and for her performance, she was not fond of the latter role; she observed that she often passed the time between the two arias and the finale addressing holiday cards.^[8]

Peak singing years[link]

In 1966, the New York City Opera revived Handel's then virtually unknown opera seria Giulio Cesare (with Norman Treigle as Cæsar), and Sills' performance as Cleopatra made her an international opera star. Sills also made her "unofficial" Met debut in its "Opera in the Parks" program as Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, though nothing further came of this other than offers from Rudolf Bing for roles such as Flotow's Martha. In subsequent seasons at the NYCO, Sills had great successes in the roles of the Queen of Shemakha in Rimsky-Korsakov's The Golden Cockerel, the title role in Manon, Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, and the three female leads Suor Angelica, Giorgetta, and Lauretta in Puccini's trilogy Il trittico.

In 1969, Sills sang Zerbinetta in the American premiere (in a concert version) of the 1912 version of Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos with the Boston Symphony. Her performance of the role, especially Zerbinetta's aria, "Grossmächtige Prinzessin", which she sang in the original higher key, won her acclaim. Home video-taped copies circulated among collectors for years afterwards, often commanding large sums on Internet auction sites (the performance was released commercially in 2006, garnering high praise). The second major event of the year was her debut as Pamira in Rossini's The Siege of Corinth at La Scala, a success that put her on the cover of Newsweek.

Sills's now high-profile career landed her on the cover of Time in 1971, where she was described as "America's Queen of Opera".^[9] The title was appropriate because Sills had purposely limited her overseas engagements because of her family. Her major overseas appearances include London's Covent Garden, Milan's La Scala, La Fenice in Venice, the Vienna State Opera, the Théâtre de Beaulieu in Lausanne, Switzerland, and concerts in Paris. In South America, she sang in the opera houses of Buenos Aires and Santiago, a concert in Lima, Peru, and appeared in several productions in Mexico City, including Lucia di Lammermoor with Luciano Pavarotti. On November 9, 1971, her performance in the New York City Opera's production of The Golden Cockerel was telecast live to cable TV subscribers.

During this period, she made her first television appearance as a talk-show personality on Virginia Graham's Girl Talk, a weekday series syndicated by ABC Films. An opera fan who was Talent Coordinator for the series persuaded the producer to put her on the air and she was a huge hit. Throughout the rest of her career she shone as a talk show guest, sometimes also functioning as a guest host. Sills underwent successful surgery for ovarian cancer in late October 1974 (sometimes misreported as breast cancer). Her recovery was so rapid and complete that she opened in Daughter of the Regiment at the San Francisco Opera a month later.^[10]

Following Sir Rudolf Bing's departure as director, Sills finally made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera on April 7, 1975 in The Siege of Corinth, receiving an eighteen-minute ovation. Other operas she sang at the Met include La traviata, Lucia di Lammermoor, Thaïs, and Don Pasquale (directed by John Dexter). In an interview after his retirement, Bing stated that his refusal to use Sills, as well as his preference for engaging, almost exclusively, Italian stars such as Renata Tebaldi – due to his notion that American audiences expected to see Italian stars – was the single biggest mistake of his career. Sills attempted to downplay her animosity towards Bing while she was still singing, and even in her two autobiographies. But in a 1997 interview, Sills spoke her mind plainly, "Oh, Mr. Bing is an ass. [W]hile everybody said what a great administrator he was and a great this, Mr. Bing was just an improbable, impossible General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera.... The arrogance of that man."^[11]

Sills was a recitalist, especially in the final decade of her career. She sang in mid-size cities and on college concert series, bringing her art to many who might never see her on stage in a fully staged opera. She also sang concerts with a number of symphony orchestras. Sills continued to perform for New York City Opera, her home opera house, essaying new roles right up to her retirement, including the leading roles in Rossini's Il Turco in Italia, Franz Lehár's Die lustige Witwe and Gian Carlo Menotti's La loca, a role written especially for her.

Although Sills' voice type was characterized as a "lyric coloratura", she took a number of heavier spinto and dramatic coloratura roles more associated with heavier voices as she grew older, including Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia (with Susanne Marsee as Orsini) and the same composer's Tudor Queens, Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda and Roberto Devereux (opposite Plácido Domingo in the title part). She was admired in those roles for transcending the lightness of her voice with dramatic interpretation, although it may have come at a cost: Sills later commented that Roberto Devereux shortened her career by at least four years.

Sills popularized opera through her talk show appearances, including Johnny Carson, Dick Cavett, David Frost, Mike Douglas, Merv Griffin, and Dinah Shore. Sills hosted her own talk show, Lifestyles with Beverly Sills, which ran on Sunday mornings on NBC for two years in the late 1970s; it won an Emmy Award.^[12] In 1979 she even appeared on The Muppet Show. Down-to-earth and approachable, Sills helped dispel the traditional image of the temperamental opera diva.

Later years and death[link]

In 1978, Sills announced she would retire on October 27, 1980, in a farewell gala at the New York City Opera. In the spring of 1979, she began acting as co-director of NYCO, and became its sole general director as of the fall season of that year, a post she held until 1989, although she remained on the NYCO board until 1991. During her time as general director, Sills helped turn what was then a financially struggling opera company into a viable enterprise. She also devoted herself to various arts causes and such charities as the March of Dimes and was sought after for speaking engagements on college campuses and for fund raisers.

From 1994 to 2002, Sills was chairman of Lincoln Center. In October 2002, she agreed to serve as chairman of the Metropolitan Opera, for which she had been a board member since 1991. She resigned as Met chairman in January 2005, citing family as the main reason (she had to place her husband, whom she had cared for over eight years, in a nursing home). She stayed long enough to supervise the appointment of Peter Gelb, formerly head of Sony Classical Records, as the Met's General Manager, to succeed Joseph Volpe in August 2006.

The tombstone of Beverly Sills in Kensico Cemetery

Peter Greenough, Sills's husband, died on September 6, 2006, at the age of 89.^[13] They would have had their 50th wedding anniversary on November 17, 2006.

She co-hosted The View for Best Friends Week on November 9, 2006, as Barbara Walters' best friend. She said that she didn't sing anymore, even in the shower, to preserve the memory of her voice.

She appeared on screen in movie theaters during HD transmissions live from the Met, interviewed during intermissions by the host Margaret Juntwait on January 6, 2007 (I puritani simulcast), as a backstage interviewer on February 24, 2007 (Eugene Onegin simulcast) and then, briefly, on April 28, 2007 (Il trittico simulcast).

On June 28, 2007, the Associated Press and CNN reported that Sills was hospitalized as "gravely ill", from lung cancer. With her daughter at her bedside, Beverly Sills succumbed to cancer on July 2, 2007, at the age of 78.^[14] She is interred in the Sharon Gardens Division of Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, NY.

Voice[link]

Sills's voice has been described at the same time "rich, supple", "silvery", "precise, a little light", "multicolored", "robust and enveloping", with "a cutting edge that can slice through the largest orchestra and chorus," soaring easily above high C.^[15][16][17] Her technique and musicianship are very praised. Conductor Thomas Schippers said in a 1971 interview with Time that she had "the fastest voice alive."^[18] The New York Times writes that "she could dispatch coloratura roulades and embellishments, capped with radiant high D's and E-flats, with seemingly effortless agility. She sang with scrupulous musicianship, rhythmic incisiveness and a vivid sense of text."^[19] Soprano Leontyne Price was "flabbergasted at how many millions of things she can do with a written scale."^[20] Her vocal range, in performance, extends from F3 to F6, she said she can sometimes hit a G6 in warm up.

Operatic repertoire[link]

These are the roles that Sills has performed on stage or for television or radio.^[21]

Honors and awards[link]

Sills received many honors and awards from the 1970s through her final years. Here are a list of her major awards, divided by category:

• Grammy Award Nominations:
  • 1969 - Scenes and Arias from French Opera;
  • 1970 - Mozart and Strauss Arias;
  • 1976 - Music of Victor Herbert (WINNER)

• Emmy Award Nominations:
  • 1975 - Profile in Music: Beverly Sills, Festival '75 (WINNER);
  • 1977 - Sills and Burnett at the Met;
  • 1978 - Lifestyles with Beverly Sills (WINNER);
  • 1980 - Beverly Sills in Concert;
  • 1981 - Great Performances: Beverly! Her Farewell Performance

• Honorary Doctorates in Music:
  • 1972 - Temple University;
  • 1973 - New York University & New England Conservatory of Music;
  • 1974 - Harvard University
  • 1975 - California Institute of the Arts

• Other Music-related awards:
  • 1970 - Musical America - Musician of the Year;
  • 1971 - Inducted as a National Patroness of Delta Omicron, an international professional music fraternity on May 1^[22]
  • 1972 - Edison Award - Manon recording;
  • 1973 - Handel Medallion from New York City for artistic achievement;
  • 1979 - Recording Industry of America Cultural Award;
  • 1980 - Golden Baton, American Symphony Orchestra League;
  • 1985 - Kennedy Center Honors;
  • 1990 - National Medal of Arts from National Endowment for the Arts;
  • 1996 - The 2nd Annual Heinz Award in Arts and Humanities^[23]
  • 2005 - Beverly Sills Artist Award established by the Metropolitan Opera ($50,000 annual award);
  • 2007 - Inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame

• Charitable and Humanitarian Awards:
  • 1979 - Pearl S. Buck Women's Award;
  • 1980 - Presidential Medal of Freedom;
  • 1981 - Barnard College Medal of Distinction;
  • 1984 - Charles S. Hughes Gold Medal Award - Nat. Conf. of Christians and Jews;
  • 1985 - Gold Medal from National Institute of Social Sciences

Recordings and broadcasts[link]

During her operatic career, Sills recorded eighteen full-length operas:

• The Ballad of Baby Doe (Bible, Cassel; Buckley, 1959)
• Giulio Cesare (Wolff, Forrester, Treigle; Rudel, 1967)
• Roberto Devereux (Wolff, Ilosfalvy, Glossop; Mackerras, 1969)
• Lucia di Lammermoor (Bergonzi, Cappuccilli, Díaz; Schippers, 1970)
• Manon (Gedda, Souzay, Bacquier; Rudel, 1970)
• La traviata (Gedda, Panerai; Ceccato, 1971)
• Maria Stuarda (Farrell, Burrows, L.Quilico; Ceccato, 1971)
• The Tales of Hoffmann (Marsee, Burrows, Treigle; Rudel, 1972)
• Anna Bolena (Verrett, Burrows, Plishka; Rudel, 1972)
• I puritani (Gedda, L.Quilico, Plishka; Rudel, 1973)
• Norma (Verrett, di Giuseppe, Plishka; Levine, 1973)
• The Siege of Corinth (Verrett, Theyard, Díaz; Schippers, 1974)
• Il barbiere di Siviglia (Barbieri, Gedda, Milnes, Raimondi; Levine, 1974–75)
• I Capuleti e i Montecchi (Baker, Gedda, Herincx, Lloyd; G.Patanè, 1975)
• Thaïs (Gedda, Milnes; Maazel, 1976)
• Louise (Gedda, van Dam; Rudel, 1977)
• Don Pasquale (Kraus, Titus, Gramm; Caldwell, 1978)
• Rigoletto (M.Dunn, Kraus, Milnes, Ramey; Rudel, 1978)

Sills also recorded nine solo recital albums of arias and songs, and was soprano soloist on a 1967 recording of Mahler's Symphony No. 2.

She starred in eight opera productions televised on PBS and several more on other public TV systems. She participated in such TV specials as A Look-in at the Met with Danny Kaye in 1975, Sills and Burnett at the Met, with Carol Burnett in 1976, and Profile in Music, which won an Emmy Award for its showing in the US in 1975, although it had been recorded in England in 1971.

Some of those televised performances have been commercially distributed on videotape and DVD:

• Ariadne auf Naxos (Watson, Nagy; Leinsdorf, 1969) [Concert Version]
• La fille du régiment (Costa-Greenspon, McDonald, Malas; Wendelken-Wilson, Mansouri, 1974)
• Roberto Devereux (Marsee, Alexander, Fredricks; Rudel, Capobianco, 1975)
• La traviata (H.Price, Fredricks; Rudel, Capobianco, 1976)
• Il barbiere di Siviglia (H.Price, Titus, Gramm, Ramey; Caldwell, Caldwell, 1976)
• Manon (H.Price, Fredricks, Ramey; Rudel, Capobianco, 1977)

Others not available commercially include:

• The Magic Flute (Pracht, Shirley, Reardon; NN, NN, 1966)
• Le coq d'or (Costa-Greenspon, di Giuseppe, Treigle; Rudel, Capobianco, 1971)
• Die lustige Witwe (H.Price, Titus; Alcántara, Capobianco, 1977)
• Il Turco in Italia (Marsee, H.Price, Titus, Gramm; Rudel, Capobianco, 1978)
• Don Pasquale (Kraus, Hagegård, Bacquier; Rescigno, Dexter, 1979)

After her retirement from singing in 1980 up through 2006, Sills was the host for many of the PBS Live from Lincoln Center telecasts.

Further reading/listening/viewing[link]

• Sills, Beverly (1976). Bubbles: A Self-Portrait. New York: Bobbs-Merrill. ISBN 0-446-81520-9. A revised edition was issued in 1981 as Bubbles: An Encore.
• Sills, Beverly (with Lawrence Linderman) (1987). Beverly: An Autobiography. New York: Bantam Books.ISBN 0-553-05173-3.
• Sills, Beverly (1987). Beverly Sills: On My Own. ISBN 0-553-45743-8. An audio book designated as a companion to Beverly: An Autobiography, with Sills speaking in interview about her life, interspersed with narration and live musical excerpts. There is no direct text from the printed autobiography.
• Paolucci, Bridget (1990). Beverly Sills. New York: Chelsea House Publishers. ISBN 1-55546-677-X.
• Sargeant, Withrop (1973). Divas. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan. ISBN 0-698-10489-7.
• Beverly Sills: Made in America (2006). Deutsche Grammophon B0007999-09. A 90-minute documentary on Sills's singing career with many rare video performance and interview clips.

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Beverly Sills

• Beverly Sills Online: tribute site with discography, bibliography, photo gallery, sound and video clips, timeline, press articles and other resources.
• Beverly Sills at Allmusic
• Beverly Sills:Special mother to the special children: summarizes Sills' charitable work for disabled children.
• Beverly Sills at the Internet Movie Database: Filmography
• Beverly Sills: National Women's Hall of Fame profile
• Beverly Sills at BrainyQuote: quotations
• Beverly Sills: Made in America (PBS Great Performances)
• Beverly Sills at OperaMom.com
• Beverly Sills at Find a Grave
• NY Times five-page obituary, dated July 3, 2007
• Sills at age 8, singing "Arditi: Il bacio"

Howard McGillin (born November 5, 1953, Los Angeles, California) is a Tony-nominated stage, screen and television actor, perhaps best known for being the world's longest running Phantom in Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera. He will star in the upcoming musical Rebecca, which will open on Broadway during the 2012-2013 season.

Biography[link]

Education and early career[link]

A graduate of Dos Pueblos High School and University of California, Santa Barbara, McGillin began his career on television, working as a contract player for Universal Studios. In the early 1980s he moved to New York with the intention of pursuing a career on Broadway. He was quickly cast as one of the male leads in the New York Shakespeare Festival's production of La Boheme, which starred Linda Ronstadt.

Career[link]

Other featured and leading roles on Broadway soon followed. Often considered a "tall, dark and handsome" leading man, McGillin originated the role of John Jasper in The Mystery of Edwin Drood at the Imperial Theatre; for his performance he was nominated for a 1986 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical. He earned a second Tony nomination in 1988 for his portrayal of Billy Crocker in the Broadway revival of Cole Porter's Anything Goes. McGillin starred in the award-winning West End revival of Mack & Mabel and sings on the cast album recording.

McGillin originated a leading role in the world premiere of Stephen Sondheim's 2003 musical Bounce and was featured in the Encores! production of the Ziegfeld Follies of 1936. He has performed in many concerts in the United States and abroad, including a production of Sondheim's Follies that was released on DVD.

McGillin has continued to perform in television and film as a voice-over artist. His is the singing voice of Gregory in South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, has narrated many books on tape, and programs/commercials on television (including the PBS series Nature.) McGillin also was the voice of Prince Derek in the film The Swan Princess. McGillin has released one solo CD, Where Time Stands Still. He has contributed to numerous cast recordings, including those of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Anything Goes, Kiss of the Spider Woman (second cast recording) and Bounce.

McGillin holds the record for the most performances by an actor in the title role of the musical The Phantom of the Opera (official title: "World's Longest Running Phantom") and was part of the musical when it became the longest-running production in Broadway history on January 9, 2006, and its twenty-first anniversary on January 26, 2009. McGillin played his last performance in the role on July 25, 2009, marking his 2,544th show.

He was also seen in the York Theatre production of I Remember Mama, which ran from October 8–10, 2010.[1]

McGillin starred as Sir Francis Chesney in the New York City Center Encores! production of Where's Charley? from March 17–20, 2011.[2]

McGillin has been cast as Frank Crawley in the upcoming Broadway musical Rebecca, which was initially slated to open at the Broadhurst Theatre on April 22, 2012, but was postponed until Spring 2013.

He is currently playing Applegate in the Paper Mill Playhouse production of Damn Yankees! in Millburn, New Jersey, which will run from March 7, 2012 through April 1, 2012.[3]

Selected stage credits[link]

Broadway[link]

• "Rebecca" (Frank Crawley) (Opens Spring 2013)
• The Phantom of the Opera (The Phantom of the Opera) (Last performance July 29, 2009)
• Kiss of the Spider Woman (Molina)
• She Loves Me (Kodaly)
• The Secret Garden (Archibald Craven)
• Anything Goes (Billy Crocker): Tony Award nomination; Drama Desk Award nomination
• The Mystery of Edwin Drood (John Jasper): Tony Award nomination; Drama Desk Award nomination; Theatre World Award
• Sunday in the Park with George (Soldier, Act 1; Alex, an artist, Act 2)

West End[link]

• Anything Goes (Billy Crocker)
• Mack & Mabel (Mack)

Other[link]

• A Child's Christmas in Wales (December, 2011)
• Where's Charley? (Sir Francis Chesney) (Spring 2011)
• Bounce world premiere: Helen Hayes Award nomination
• Peter Pan national tour (Captain Hook)
• As Thousands Cheer (off-Broadway)
• Ziegfeld Follies of 1936 (Encores!)
• The Swan Princess (Prince Derek)
• South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut (Gregory (singing))

External link and references[link]

• Howard McGillin's Official Website
• Howard McGillin at the Internet Movie Database
• Howard McGillin at the Internet Broadway Database
• Howard McGillin at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• Biography at Playbill.com
• "A Veteran Phantom Embraces "The Music of the Night" Once Again Oct. 3" Kenneth Jones, Playbill.com, October 3, 2005
• Howard McGillin: Interview by Ladyghost

Sweeney Todd is a fictional character who first appeared as the murderer of the Victorian penny dreadful The String of Pearls (1846–1847) and he was later introduced as an antihero of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and its film adaptations. Claims that Sweeney Todd was a historical person^[1][2] are strongly disputed by scholars,^[3][4][5] although there are possible legendary prototypes.^[6]

In the original version of the tale, Todd is a barber who dispatches his victims by pulling a lever while they are in his barber chair, which makes them fall backward down a revolving trapdoor into the basement of his shop, generally causing them to break their necks or skulls. Just in case they are alive, he goes to the basement and "polishes them off" (slitting their throats with his straight razor). In some adaptations, the murdering process is reversed, with Todd slitting the throats of his customers before they are dispatched into the basement via the revolving trapdoor. After Todd has robbed his dead victims of their goods, Mrs. Lovett, his partner in crime (in some later versions, his friend and/or lover), assists him in disposing of the bodies by baking their flesh into meat pies, and selling them to the unsuspecting customers of her pie shop. Todd's barber shop is situated at 186 Fleet Street, London, next to St. Dunstan's church, and is connected to Mrs. Lovett's pie shop in nearby Bell Yard by means of an underground passage. In most versions of the story, he and Mrs. Lovett hire an unwitting orphan boy, Tobias Ragg, to serve the pies to customers.

The tale surrounding the character became a staple of Victorian melodrama. Later it was the subject of a 1959 ballet by English composer Sir Malcolm Arnold and, in 1979, a Tony award-winning Broadway musical by Stephen Sondheim. Sweeney Todd has also been featured in several films, the most recent being 2007's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp, based on the 1979 musical.

Literary history[link]

Sweeney Todd first appeared in a story entitled The String of Pearls: A Romance. This penny dreadful was published in 18 weekly parts, in Edward Lloyd's The People's Periods and Family Library, issues 7-24, 21 November 1846 to 20 March 1847. It was probably written by James Malcolm Rymer, though Thomas Peckett Prest has also been credited with it; it is likely that each worked on the serial from part to part. Other attributions include Edward P. Hingston, George Macfarren and Albert Richard Smith.^[6][7] In February/March 1847, before the serial was even completed, The String of Pearls was adapted as a melodrama by George Dibden Pitt for the Britannia Theatre in Hoxton. It was in this alternative version of the tale, rather than the original, that Todd acquired his catchphrase: "I'll polish him off".^[6] Neil Gaiman, in a promotional "penny dreadful", identified a number of earlier texts that feed into the Todd story, some dating back to at least the late 17th century.^{[citation needed]}

Another, lengthier, penny part serial was published by Lloyd from 1847/8, with 92 episodes and published in book form in 1850 as The String of Pearls with the subtitle "The Barber of Fleet Street. A Domestic Romance". This expanded version of the story was 732 pages long.^[6] A plagiarised version of this appeared in America c. 1852–53 as Sweeney Todd: or the Ruffian Barber. A Tale of Terror of the Seas and the Mysteries of the City by "Captain Merry" (a pseudonym for American author Harry Hazel (1814–89)).^[6]

In 1875, Frederick Hazleton's c. 1865 dramatic adaptation Sweeney Todd, the Barber of Fleet Street: or the String of Pearls (see below) was published as Vol 102 of Lacy's Acting Edition of Plays.^[6]

A scholarly, annotated edition of the original 1846–47 serial was published in volume form in 2007 by the Oxford University Press under the title of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, edited by Robert Mack.

Alleged historical basis[link]

The original story of Sweeney Todd was quite possibly based on an older urban legend, originally based on dubious pie-fillings.^[6] In Charles Dickens's Pickwick Papers (1836/7), the servant Sam Weller says that a pieman used cats 'for beefsteak, veal and kidney, 'cording to the demand', and recommends that people should buy pies only 'when you know the lady as made it, and is quite sure it ain't kitten.'^[8] Dickens then developed this in Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-4) published two years before the appearance of Sweeney Todd in The String of Pearls (1846-7), a character called Tom Pinch is grateful that his own "evil genius did not lead him into the dens of any of those preparers of cannibalic pastry, who are represented in many country legends as doing a lively retail business in the metropolis".^[9] A similar story, which first appeared in an 1824 publication called The Tell Tale, reported how a barber and wig-maker of the Rue de la Harpe in Paris cut his customers' throats, relieved them of their valuables and then had their bodies made into meat pies, utilising the services of a pastry cook, whose establishment was on the same street.^[6][7]

Claims that Sweeney Todd was a real person were first made in the introduction to the 1850 (expanded) edition of The String of Pearls and have persisted to the present day.^[6] In two books,^[1][2] Peter Haining argued that Sweeney Todd was a historical figure who committed his crimes around 1800. Nevertheless, other researchers who have tried to verify his citations find nothing in these sources to back Haining's claims.^[3][4][5] A check of the website Old Bailey at^[10] for "Associated Records 1674-1834" for an alleged trial in December 1801 and hanging of Sweeney Todd for January 1802 show no reference; the only murder trial for this period is that of a Governor/Lt Col. Joseph Wall who was hanged 28 January 1802 for killing a Benjamin Armstrong on 10 July 1782 on the isle of Gorée, West Africa, and the discharge of a Humphrey White in January 1802.^{[original research?][10]}

A late (1890s) reference to the urban legend of the murdering barber can be found in the poem by the Australian bush poet Banjo Paterson - The Man from Ironbark.

On stage, screen and audio[link]

• The String of Pearls (1847) a melodrama by George Dibden Pitt. It opened at Hoxton's Britannia Theatre, and billed as "founded on fact". It was something of a success, and the story spread by word of mouth and took on the quality of an urban legend. Various versions of the tale were staples of the British theatre for the rest of the century.
• Sweeney Todd, the Barber of Fleet Street: or the String of Pearls (c. 1865), a dramatic adaption written by Frederick Hazleton which premiered at the Old Bower Saloon, Stangate Street, Lambeth.^[6]
• "Sweeney Todd, The Barber", a song which assumes its audience knows the stage version and claims that such a character existed in real life. Stanley Holloway, who recorded it in 1956, attributed it to R. P. Weston, a songwriter active from 1906 to 1934.
• Sweeney Todd (1926), the first film version of the story, starring G.A. Baughan in the title role. The film is now lost.
• Sweeney Todd (1928) a silent film starring Moore Marriott as Sweeney Todd and Iris Darbyshire as Mrs. Lovett. This is the first surviving film adaptation.
• Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1936), a film version of the Victorian melodrama starring Tod Slaughter as Sweeney Todd and Stella Rho as Mrs. "Lovatt".
• "The Strange Case of the Demon Barber" (8 January 1946), an adaptation of the Sweeney Todd story featured in an episode of the radio drama The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. In this interpretation, an actor playing the character on stage begins to believe he is committing similar murders while sleepwalking, while Holmes and Watson uncover something different that may prove his sanity.
• In 1947, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's CBC Stage Series broadcast a radio adaptation of the Pitt play starring Mavor Moore as Todd, Jane Mallett as Mrs. Lovett, John Drainie as Tobias, Lloyd Bochner as Mark Ingesterie and Arden Kaye as Johanna Oakley. The production was adapted by Ronald Hamilton and directed by Andrew Allan, with original music composed by Lucio Agostini.
• Sweeney Todd (1959), a ballet version performed by the Royal Ballet with music by Malcolm Arnold. The choreography was directed by John Cranko.
• Bloodthirsty Butchers (1970), a horror film with John Miranda as Sweeney Todd and Jane Helay as Maggie Lovett, directed by Andy Milligan.
• "Sweeney Todd" (1970), an episode of the ITV series Mystery and Imagination starring Freddie Jones as Sweeney Todd and Heather Canning as Nellie Lovett. In this adaptation, written by Vincent Tilsey and directed by Reginald Collin, the title character is portrayed as insane rather than evil. Lewis Fiander played Mark Ingesterie with Mel Martin as the heroine Charlotte and Len Jones as Tobias.
• Sweeney Todd (1973), an hour-long TV production by the CBC Television series The Purple Playhouse with Barry Morse as Todd. This was again Pitt's version of the play.
• Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1973), a play by the British playwright Christopher Bond. This version of the story was the first to give Todd a more sympathetic motive: he is a wrongfully imprisoned barber who returns to London after 15 years in an Australian penal colony under the new name Sweeney Todd, only to find that the judge responsible for his imprisonment has raped his young wife and driven her to suicide, and adopted his daughter. He at first plans to kill the judge, but when his prey escapes, he swears revenge on the whole world and begins to slash the throats of his customers. The character's new, tragic backstory was Bond's way of grafting dramatic themes from The Revenger's Tragedy onto Pitt's stage plot.
• Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. A Musical Thriller (1979), the acclaimed musical adaptation of Bond's play by Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler starring Len Cariou as Sweeney Todd (here christened Benjamin Barker) and Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Lovett. George Hearn and Dorothy Loudon later succeeded Cariou and Lansbury in the lead roles. In 1982, the musical was televised on The Entertainment Channel, starring Hearn and Lansbury, and directed by Terry Hughes and Harold Prince. It was produced by RKO Pictures and RKO/Nederlander Productions.
• The Tale of Sweeney Todd (1998), a television movie directed by John Schlesinger, commissioned by British Sky Broadcasting for which Ben Kingsley received a Screen Actors Guild Best Actor nomination for his portrayal of the title role. Joanna Lumley portrayed Mrs. Lovett.
• Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street in Concert (2001), a filmed concert version of Sondheim's musical, stars George Hearn as Sweeney Todd/Benjamin Barker, Patti LuPone as Mrs. Lovett, Timothy Nolen as Judge Turpin and Neil Patrick Harris as Tobias.
• In Jersey Girl (2004) Ollie Trinke (Ben Affleck) and his on screen daughter sing "God, That's Good!!" from the Sondheim version for her school play, accompanied by Liv Tyler.
• The second episode of the BBC Radio comedy series 1835, entitled "Haircut, Sir?", written by Jim Poyser and broadcast in June 2004 had aimless aristocrat Viscount Belport (Paul Rider) and his servant Ned (Jason Done) joining the police force under Sir Robert Peel and encountering demon barber Sweeney Todd (Jonathan Keeble) on their first case.
• A Broadway revival of the Sondheim musical, directed by John Doyle, was mounted at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre in 2005. The ten-person cast, who played their own instruments in new orchestrations, consisted of John Arbo (Jonas Fogg; bass player), Donna Lynne Champlin (Pirelli; piano, accordion, flute), Alexander Gemignani (The Beadle; piano, trumpet), Mark Jacoby (Judge Turpin; trumpet, percussion), Diana DiMarzio (Beggar Woman/Lucy Barker; clarinet), Benjamin Magnuson (Anthony Hope; cello, piano), Lauren Molina (Johanna Barker; cello), Manoel Felciano (Tobias; violin, clarinet, piano), Patti LuPone (Mrs. Lovett; tuba, percussion), and Michael Cerveris (Sweeney Todd; guitar). Cerveris, LuPone, and Felciano were all nominated for Tony Awards; the show itself was nominated for Best Revival, and won Tonys for Best Direction and Best Orchestration.
• Sweeney Todd (2006), a BBC television drama version with a screenplay written by Joshua St Johnston and starring Ray Winstone in the title role and Essie Davis as Mrs Lovett.
• Sweeney Todd and the String of Pearls: an Audio Melodrama in Three Despicable Acts (2007), an audio play by Yuri Rasovsky, won three 2008 Audie Awards for best audio drama, best original work and for achievement in production.
• Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) a film directed by Tim Burton, adapted from Sondheim's musical. It stars Johnny Depp as Sweeney Todd, Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Lovett, Alan Rickman as Judge Turpin, and Ed Sanders as Toby. The cast also includes Sacha Baron Cohen as Pirelli and Timothy Spall as Beadle Bamford, Turpin's henchman. The film received two Golden Globe Awards - one for Best Actor in a Comedy or Musical (Johnny Depp), and one for Best Picture, Comedy or Musical. The film was also nominated for three Academy Awards, winning for Art Direction.
• "Demon Sweeney Todd", a song written by the NWOBHM band, Saxon in their album Into The Labyrinth released in 2009
• Sweeney Todd Musical, a 2009 musical rendition by the Repertory Philippines group, starring Audie Gemora in the title role, and Menchu Lauchengco-Yulo as Mrs. Lovett. Gerard Salonga of Filharmonika conducted the orchestra. It was directed by Baby Barredo and Michael Williams.
• Oh My Meat Pie, an episode in the 12th season of Good Eats, an educational cooking show on The Food Network starring Alton Brown. Brown plays his great-grandfather who stumbles upon a pie shop in London run by Mrs. Lovett; they are frequently visited by her neighbor, Mr. Todd, a barber. At one point, Lovett provides Brown with a large tub of ground meat for his recipe of shepherd's pie and is evasive about what type of meat it is.
• "Andy's Play", the third episode in the 7th season of The Office, centers around Andy Bernard's role in a local musical production of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
• "Major League of Extraordinary Gentlemen", the seventh episode in the 5th season of Robot Chicken, SpongeBob discovers that Mr. Krabs is killing other sea creatures and baking them into pastries. SpongeBob plays the role of Mark Ingestrie, while Mr. Krabs plays the role of Sweeney Todd.
• Inspired by Sweeney Todd's slaughter and sale of human flesh, the Danish motion picture "The Green Butchers", starring Mads Mikkelsen and Nikolaj Lie Kaas, also features cannibalistic slaughter and sale of meat leading to a booming business mainly based on the human meat, in this instance sold as marinated chicken.
• "Waiting to Exhale", the second episode of the 2nd season of the television series Dexter. When Dexter Morgan asks his colleague Vince Masuka where the best place to hide a corpse is, he ends his extensive answer with "Hell, even meat pies".

Comics[link]

The character of Sweeney Todd is presented as a villain in Marc Andreyko's Manhunter series, where he appears as a ghost which possesses men (causing them to resemble him) and murders women. A supporting character, Obsidian, is shown to be a fan of Sondheim's musical.

Neil Gaiman and Michael Zulli were to have created a Sweeney Todd adaptation for Taboo, published by Steve Bissette and Tundra, but only completed a prologue.

Classical Comics, a UK publisher creating graphic novel adaptations of classical literature, has produced a full colour paperback Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street Sweeney Todd (176 pages, November 2010, Original Text, ISBN 978-1-906332-79-2, Quick Text, ISBN 978-1-906332-80-8, forthcoming) with script adaptation by Sean M. Wilson, linework by Declan Shalvey; colouring by Jason Cardy & Kat Nicholson and lettering by Jim Campbell.

Rhyming slang[link]

In rhyming slang, Sweeney Todd is the Flying Squad (a branch of the UK's Metropolitan Police), hence the television series The Sweeney.

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street edited by Robert Mack (2007). Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-922933-3
• Robert Mack (2008) The Wonderful and Surprising History of Sweeney Todd: The Life and Times of an Urban Legend. Continuum. ISBN 0-8264-9791-8
• Rothman, Irving N. "Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd (1979). In The Barber in Modern Jewish Culture (2008). 365-76. ISBN-13: 978-0-7734-5072-1

External links[link]

• The String of Pearls etext of the 1846/47 penny dreadful that first featured Sweeney Todd
• BBC Radio 4 Extra - 1835: 2. Haircut, Sir?