Sweeney Todd
Stephen Sondheim
Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Musical thriller.
Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.
Libretto by Hugh Wheeler inspired by the eponymous play by Christopher Bond.
Orchestrations by Jonathan Tunick.
First performed on New York’s Broadway at the Uris Theater on 1st March 1979, directed by Harold Prince and produced by Richard Barr, Charles Woodward, Robert Fryer, Mary Lea Johnson and Martin Richards in collaboration with Dean and Judy Manos.
New production.
Coproduction with the Komische Oper Berlin.
Infos
Mulhouse
La Filature
Strasbourg
Opéra
Intermission included
**Prologue
One hour before each performance, a playwright will give you a short 30-minute introduction.
Cast
Direction musicale Bassem Akiki Mise en scène Barrie Kosky Décors, costumes Katrin Lea Tag Lumières Olaf Freese Chef de Chœur de l’Opéra national du Rhin Hendrik Haas
Artists
Sweeney Todd Scott Hendricks Mrs. Nellie Lovett Natalie Dessay Anthony Hope NN Johanna Barker Marie Oppert La Mendiante Jasmine Roy Tobias Ragg NN Judge Turpin Jens Larsen Adolfo Pirelli Paul Curievici Beadle Bamford Glen Cunningham Chœur de l’Opéra national du Rhin, Orchestre philharmonique de Strasbourg
Presentation
While vengeance is a dish usually best served cold, Benjamin Baker prefers it hot. Sentenced to forced labor by a corrupt judge who violated his wife and kept his daughter as his ward, the barber has spent fifteen years filling his heart with hate for the genteel London society that treated him so badly. Back in Fleet Street under the name of Sweeney Todd, he reclaims his razors and old premises above the shop where Mrs. Lovett scrapes a living selling meat pies. When men start to disappear, rumors start to fly. Might the sallow barber and the slatternly baker next door be in cahoots?
Nineteenth-century Britain was obsessed with penny dreadfuls, tales of the macabre inspired by true events and serialized in print. One of the products of this craze was the character Sweeney Todd for whom much later, in 1970, the English playwright Christopher Bond invented a past and motives borrowed from episodes of The Count of Monte-Cristo and The Barber of Seville. Nine years later, the genius that was the late Stephen Sondheim immortalized the vengeance of the barber of Fleet Street in his epic and wildly imaginative score. Hot on the heels of the triumphant West Side Story in 2022, the colorful Barrie Kosky takes on Sondheim and the stage of the Opéra national du Rhin with this hilarious and rip-roaring musical thriller, starring Scott Hendricks and Natalie Dessay under the direction of Bassem Akiki.
In English
Overtitled in French, German