Stephen Sondheim, 1930-2021: An American Genius

Stephen Sondheim, who has died at the age of 91, will be remembered as the man who wrote memorable musicals that have maintained a tradition of musical theatre fundamental to American culture.

Americans have excelled at the performance of the Euroepan classical tradition, but Europeans have had to poach the musical from its colonial offspring even if some of the influences that shaped American musical theatre were Euroepan in origin -Ziegfeld's Follies was, after all, not possible without the Folies Bergère that was founded in Paris in 1869, and Ziegfeld's Follies which started as an excuse to parade semi-naked women on stage in 'tasteful' entertaiment, evolved into the musicals one associates with George Cohan, George Gershwin, Rogers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Loewe et al, all the way to Lin-Manuel Miranda.

I am not a fan of the genre. I do recall being taken to see Lionel Bart's Oliver! when I was about 10 or 11 years old, and because my grandmother lived in New York from c1913 to the 1930s where I assume she went to see the shows, we were taken to see the musicals on film, such as Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and South Pacific. My last visit to a live musical was the third performance of Evita when it opened in London in the 1980s, with a fine production by Hal Prince, and one memorable song.

That said, Sondheim was a genius at the genre, and I am sure his death will lead to revivals of his shows, though many of them have never stopped being part of the repertoire, as firm an endorsement as one can have.

The dark side of Sondheim is also a very American story, that he never wrote a part for a Black character, that his purist attitude to the genre meant that he complained about a new production of Porgy and Bess 'tweaking' the casting and other aspects of it to give the musical a more 'contemporary' aspect (this in 2011), while he himself, though a gay man in a gay marriage, did not think one of the couples in his show Company should or could be re-cast as same-sex.

I don't suppose Sondheim was a racist, but the musical theatre in the US has never been able to avoid the way in which Race has soaked into every aspect of American society, and in this, 'Sondheim so White' is a natural product, I doubt he even thought about it, and that might underline the fact of it.

Even more intriguing is the possibility that the musical theatre of America is Jewish, not in a religious sense, but owing to the Jews who were so good at it. This perspecive suggests too that the Jewish angle is one in which the musical as a celebration of American life was one of the key ways in which Jews assimilated into White America, craving White America's acceptance as their equal, something which a hard core of White Americans do not and probably never will accept. After all, if one believes in the 18th and 19th century definitions of Race that 'justified' slavery, Jews cannot be classed as White, and to confer it as some sort of Honour merely emphasizes what Race actually is as a social construct.

Or, the musical theatre can be seen as the way in which Immigrants established themselves as key contributors to American culture, distinct from the European classical tradition, so that alongside the Jewish input -and I am not sure what it is that would be Jewish in musical theatre as opposed to something else- one has the Italian element, if one believes certain types of song are Italian in origin, usually sentimental ballads.

Black Musicals were phenomally successful at one time, yet even in the case of the 1920s hit 'Shuffling Along', its black performers had to add black make up to their skin, and even then the language and other aspects of Black performance dragged in stereotypes that owed more to White perceptions of Black people than anything intrinsically Black. As for the 1935 musical Porgy and Bess, the Gershwin brothers may have written this to make a few bucks out of Black people, rather than make a 'Liberal' political statement.

And lest one try to excuse the higher levels of art, Anna Netrebko blacked up to sing Verdi's Aida at the Met in 2018 -Aida after all, is a Ethiopian Princess, though Teresa Stolz, who first sang the role, did not.

Sondheim thus represents something that Americans must come to terms with, what it is that the country's public culture says about the soul of that country. Genius has this way of unsettling the apple cart, even as, or because the apples taste good.