Broadway Legend Found Dead At 91 In Connecticut Home
Broadway legend Stephen Sondheim was found dead, Sunday. Sondheim is better known for his work behind the scenes during his decades-long career as a Broadway composer. Even if his name does not sound familiar to you, his work was unmistakable,
The news of Sondheim's death was announced on Friday, the same day as his passing at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut, by his attorney and friend F. Richard Pappas, according to the New York Times. The day before, Pappas said that Sondheim had celebrated Thanksgiving with a dinner with friends in Roxbury.
Early on in his unparalleled career, Sondheim wrote the lyrics to the classic musicals West Side Story, which premiered in 1957, and Gypsy two years later.
In addition to his theater work, Mr. Sondheim wrote occasional music for films, including the score for “Stavisky,” Alain Renais’s 1974 movie about a French financier and embezzler, and his song “Sooner or Later (I Always Get My Man)” for Warren Beatty’s “Dick Tracy” won an Academy Award in 1991. Six cast albums from his shows won Grammy Awards, and “Send In the Clowns” won the Grammy for song of the year in 1975.
Bradley Whitford also portrays Sondheim in Lin-Manuel Miranda's recently released film Tick, Tick... Boom!, about the life of late songwriter and Rent creator Jonathan Larson, People reported.
Sondheim is credited as a major influential figure in Larson's life, whose song "Sunday" takes a riff from Sondheim's Sunday in the Park With George.
New York Times Noted that Mr. Sondheim, who also maintained a home in Manhattan, a townhouse on East 49th Street, had been spending most of his time during the pandemic in Roxbury, in western Connecticut.
But he returned to New York this month to attend revivals of two of his musicals: on Nov. 14, for the opening night of “Assassins,” at the Classic Stage Company in Lower Manhattan, and the next night for the long-delayed first preview, since Broadway reopened, of “Company,” also starring Patti LuPone, at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater.
Mr. Sondheim was “extremely” pleased by both productions, Mr. Pappas, his lawyer, said.