A Little Night Music (1973)
Book: Hugh Wheeler
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In short: A Little Night Music is a lighthearted, operetta-like comedy featuring nuanced characters. The show has elements of operetta and is entirely built around innovative waltz music with subtle harmonies.
“There is no better example of Sondheim’s penchant for an erudite, knowing, whimsical chuckle at the human condition.”
Jonathan Tunick (orchestrator, musical director, eGOT-winner)
Overview A Little Night Music - background and excerpts
Quick, send in
the clowns.
Don’t bother,
they’re here.
Every move and
every breath,
and you hardly
feel a thing,
brings a perfect
little death.
It’s a very short road
from the pinch
and the punch
to the paunch
and the pouch
and the pension.
A Little Night Music has a completely different tone from its immediate predecessors, Company and Follies. The musical is romantic, operatic, light in tone, and has a traditional plot. Its innovation lies in its unique musical consistency through waltz rhythms, complex lyrical structures, and the blend of classical comedy with deep character studies. It also includes Sondheim’s most famous song, “Send in the Clowns.”
Plot Summary
The musical is based on Ingmar Bergman’s 1955 film Smiles of a Summer Night and is set in Sweden around 1900. Widower Fredrik Egerman has recently remarried a much younger woman, Anne, when he encounters his former lover, actress Desiree Armfeldt. Meanwhile, Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm, the husband of Anne’s school friend Charlotte, also falls under Desiree’s spell. Fredrik’s serious but troubled son, Henrik, has developed feelings for his stepmother. All parties come together for a weekend at the estate of Desiree’s mother, where their tangled romances come to a head.
Musical and Lyrical Innovations
For A Little Night Music Sondheim created a musical foundation built around variations on the waltz. Almost the entire score is written in 3/4 time.
The number three also appears in other ways. There are moments when three characters sing three different melodies simultaneously, and duets always center around a third person.
Sondheim incorporated elements of classical music, with influences from Brahms, Ravel, Rachmaninoff, Strauss, and Mozart, blending these with modern themes and structures to create an innovative mix of old and new. The score is vocally demanding and is often performed by opera companies.
The tone of the piece also allowed Sondheim to experiment with the lyrics. The text is highly refined and complex, maintaining a tone of irony and wit that deepens the characters and their relationships. Sondheim employed subtle wordplay, internal rhymes, and intricate rhythmic structures.
“It’s a masterpiece, it’s one of the pieces I go back to play again and again.
Andrew Lloyd Webber (composer, egot-winner)
It’s so brilliant, all in three-four waltz time but after a while you don’t notice that conceit, because music is so brilliant.”
Reception
A Little Night Music was enthusiastically received by both critics and audiences when it premiered in 1973. The musical was praised for its refined music, clever lyrics, and elegant, humorous script.
Sondheim himself initially found Wheeler’s script dull and one-dimensional but later came to regard it as “one of the half dozen best books ever written for a musical.” The show won six Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Book, and Best Original Score, quickly becoming a classic in musical theater. A 1977 film adaptation starring Elizabeth Taylor, Len Cariou, and Diana Rigg was unsuccessful. Sondheim, who had opposed the idea of a film adaptation, remarked, “The movie was a sad and listless affair and a waste of everyone’s time.”
Love comes first.
It matters the most at its worst.
You always feel underrehearsed.
One sets the conditions,
then finds the positions reversed.
Video Excerpts: “Send in the clowns”
“Send in the clowns” marks the moment when Desiree finally responds to Fredrik’s advances, only for him to decide to return to Anne. To Sondheim’s astonishment, the song was later recorded by Frank Sinatra and Judy Collins , winning the Grammy for Song of the Year in 1975. This site includes a version by Judi Dench, who played Desiree in London in 1995.
The song is also an exception to the demanding musical style of the show’s other numbers. Because Desiree’s role required a specific and rare talent for light comedy, it was intended to be a speaking role to avoid limiting casting options. In the end, Sondheim wrote “Send in the Clowns” for Glynis Johns, who was comfortable with a simple song.
The “clowns” in the title often raise questions. Desiree, an actress, uses the term as a theater reference, meaning: when the show isn’t going well, send in the fools, the clowns. With “Don’t bother, they’re here,” she declares herself and Fredrik the fools.
She’d strike you as unenlightened –
No, I’d strike her first.
Too many people muddle sex
with mere desire.
And when emotion intervenes,
the nets descend.It should on no
account perplex,
or worse, inspire.
It’s but a pleasurable means
To a measurable end.Why does no one comprehend?
Other video excerpts (in show's order)
- “A weekend in the country” |
"A weekend in the country" is one of the finest examples in Sondheim’s work of a full scene in musical form. It closes the first act, as all the characters, each for their own reasons, decide to spend the weekend at the Armfeldt estate. Charlotte and Anne watch with dismay as their husbands set their sights on charming Desiree. - The musical’s signature waltz music is heard in “Night Waltz”.
- In the 1977 film adaptation, part of this music is set to lyrics in the opening number, “Love takes time”.
- “The glamorous life” is Desiree’s daughter’s song about her famous mother.
- In “You must meet my wife” Fredrik tells Desiree about his young wife, Anne, though Desiree has little patience for it.
- In “Liaisons” Desiree’s mother reminisces about her younger years.
- Also from the film version is “Every day a little death”in which Charlotte confides to the inexperienced Anne about her marriage to a man she can neither live with nor without.
- “The miller’s son” is a reflection from the maid, who, from her peripheral role, has a clearer view of the main characters’ lives than they do themselves. She chooses to embrace life’s temporary pleasures. The song is rich with musical and lyrical references to the number three.
Stephen Sondheim about A Little Night Music
“I thought the show could be about the danger, and inevitable failure, of trying to maneuver people emotionally. Hugh [Wheeler, red], however, was not a man given to what-ifs; his work had always been linear and direct, not fanciful. He tried to write the libretto I had in mind, but his heart wasn’t in it. Hal [Prince, red.] told him to […] write the show his way, without input from me. Hugh replied that I would find it boring and literal […]. Hugh was right: I found it boring and literal. Not only that, but he’d taken all the darkness out of it, leaving a graceful but fluffily light comedy version of Bergman’s movie. […]
[My real-life Muse] pointed out that, despite its not being what I had wanted, this project was more than “fluff” and that a score for it would let me show off; I could let loose with verbal dazzle and technical prowess, something I had been able to demonstrate only sporadically before. So I did, and I showed off, and everyone was impressed. I should add that Hal had once described the show as ‘whipped cream with knives,” but he was more interested in the whipped cream and I was more interested in the knives.
I kept my interest up by figuring out how to fulfill my original notion of Theme and Variations. The solution turned out to be not a dramaturgical but a musical one. […] A score of waltz variations would be appropriate, and would supply a structural thread that could help cohere a disparate group of songs. […]
I think I did [avoid repetitiousness, red.], and in the course of writing them, I got to like the show enormously, not least because of Hugh’s supple and surprisingly ageless libretto. Whenever I have to go see it […] I fret in advance that it will seem like homework, and find, once the lights have dimmed, that I have an exhilarating time watching it. I underestimated Hugh’s work shamefully when I first read it. After living with it through numerous productions for more than thirty-five years, I’ve come to the conclusion that it is one of the half dozen best books ever written for a musical. […]
Hal Prince has often said publicly, with some disdain, that our collaboration with Hugh on A Little Night Music was “all about having a hit”. I disagree. Certainly, we both wanted a commercial success after the financial failure of Follies, but I think Hal’s lack of enthusiasm stems from two sources: first, the show wasn’t daringly different enough, as Company and Follies had been, and second, A Little Night Music was a writer’s piece rather than a director’s – it lacked the chances for invention and spectacle called for by other musicals he had directed. Nevertheless, despite his demurrer, I do think he had a good time bringing out the elegance and lightness of the show. It was an exercise in style, something both Hal and I like to do, and, with Hugh, we did it well.”
More A Little Night Music: audio and video
Cast albums
Full shows/concerts
Go to More Sondheim for our Sondheim Archives.
A Little Night Music in the Netherlands
Most recent large production
NEDERLANDSE REISOPERA
Opening: March 16th, 2019, Wilminktheater Enschede
Cast: Susanna Rigvava-Dumas (Desiree), Paul Groot (Frederik), Laetitia Gerards (Anne), Jessica Aszodi (Charlotte), Job Greuter (Hendrik) and others
Translation: English version
Director: Zack Winokur
Audio and video
Fontys Conservatorium (2018): audio and photo’s.
Reviews of A Little Night Music
Original production (1973)
“At last a new operetta! At last resonances and elegances in a Broadway musical. A Little Night Music, which opened at the Shubert Theater last night, is heady, civilized, sophisticated and enchanting. […] Mr. Wheeler’s book is uncommonly urbane and funny, and the very real sophistication has considerable surface depth. Yet perhaps the real triumph belongs to Stephen Sondheim, who wrote the music and lyrics. The music is a celebration of 3/4 time, an orgy of plaintively memorable waltzes, all talking of past loves and lost worlds. […] Then of course there are Mr. Sondheim’s breathtaking lyrics. They have the kind of sassy, effortless poetry that Cole Porter mastered. The mother announces grandly: “I acquired some position — plus a tiny Titian,” and this is coming from a lyricist who only seconds before has dazzingly made “raisins” rhyme with “liaisons.” Grace is abounding — who but Mr. Sondheim would dare: “The hip-bath, the hip-bath, how can you trip and slip into hip-bath.” You have to be very hip, and Mr. Sondheim is. […] A Little Night Music is soft on the ears, easy on the eyes, and pleasant on the mind. It is less than brash, but more than brassy, and it should give a lot of pleasure. It is the remembrance of a few things past, and all to the sound of a waltz and the understanding smile of a memory. Good God! — and adult musical” – Clive Barnes, The New York Times (1973)
California revival (2019)
“Like all musicals with Stephen Sondheim scores, A Little Night Music, which won six 1973 Tonys including Best Musical, asks a lot of its actors. They must sing superbly, negotiating intricate rhythms in songs that are either waltzes or variations on 3/4 time. Their characters must make believable transitions from self-deception to self-discovery. And they must convey the nuances of their characters’ complex emotional states, such as the combination of fear, longing, and denial. It’s delicate, tricky stuff, but under the sensitive direction of Valerie Rachelle, the cast of PCPA Theaterfest’s production beautifully captures the work’s bittersweet brilliance. – Tom Jacobs, Backstage (2019).
Australia revival (2023)
“Sondheim’s shows stand apart from the musical theatre likes of Stephen Schwartz or Andrew Lloyd-Webber (or the seemingly endless supply of jukebox musicals in recent decades) due to their blazing intelligence and uncompromising commitment to both musical and dramatic heft. But even by Sondheim’s standards, A Little Night Music is unlike a conventional musical, existing in a hinterland between being a straight play with songs and an operetta. Indeed, the witty wordplay of Sondheim’s lyrics are contrasted by the extended passages of Ibsen-esque dialogue in Hugh Wheeler’s book, which channels a dryer, more cerebral humour.” – Maxim Boom, Time-Out (2023)
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