A Little Night Music

[ceebeegee]

I've been rediscovering A Little Night Music lately. I've always loved that score, I always felt its Northern European-ness spoke to me, especially "Every Day a Little Death." Interestingly it's based on a comedy--it IS a comedy--but has such a complex, sophisticated, melancholy core. And the stuff the liebeslieder singers do is amazing--of all Sondheim's many amazing lyrics, I don't think you can top "the hands of the clock turn/but don't sing a nocturne just yet." So clever, it just takes your breath away.

I was reading about it on Wikipedia and looked up the film. They set the film in Austria??? The hell? Why? Austria has no midnight sun, that's a Scandinavian phenomenon--and if you remove that element of the setting, you remove the whole metaphor of "Perpetual Anticipation" which is a BRILLIANT metaphor--why would they gut the story that way? Plus, as I said, the core of melancholy is a Northern European thing (a Scandinavian thing, I should say)--culturally, Germans are not supposed to suffer from depression the way the Swedes are.

Comments

[ceebeegee.livejournal.com]

It's true. A Sondheim musical with a hellishly difficult score and yet two of the leads were originated by non-singers. It is a bit perverse.

That said, although the actor in me would love to play Charlotte (God, I love "Every Day a Little Death"), the singer in me would LOVE to be one of the liebeslieder singers. They have the best songs in the show!

Where in Florida are you living right now?