Stephen Sondheim
I don’t know about you but I spent this past weekend counting every one of my years and feeling grateful for all of them.
Rita Moreno, at or near 90 years of age, on 60 Minutes, combing through the highlights and the horrors of her lifelong career as a performing artist. The broadcast of the final concert of Tony Bennett, the very last time we will hear him sing about the city where he left his heart.
But the death, or should I say, the life of 91 years of Stephen Sondheim? I searched and dithered through every favorite—Elaine Stritch or Patti LaPone singing “The Ladies Who Lunch,” or the late Beth Howland and those who followed her, in a feat of seemingly impossible enunciation in “(Not) Getting Married Today,” the whole of Sunday in the Park With George. In the end, it was Dame Judi Dench, a legend herself, who ended the dithering, and without a doubt. Watch her perform “Send in the Clowns.” (Photo, top, Stephen Sondheim at a performance of Sweeney Todd in Barcelona, courtesy of WikiCommons.)
[Just in: We the People will be presenting Side by Side by Sondheim at the Briggs Opera House in White River Junction in May.]