Sweeney Todd
Mingling the shriek of a factory whistle, the organ, and the melody of a medieval requiem chant, this music makes the audience laugh and then, within the same beat, sends a chill down the spine.
At a glance 🔭💭
Some coordinates adapted from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) · Pleiades (CC BY 3.0)
The creators ⏳🌊
- ComposerStephen Sondheim
Writing both music and lyrics, he created a near-operatic musical in which song carries most of the drama.
- BookHugh Wheeler
He adapted Christopher Bond's play into the musical's book and won the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical.
- DirectorHarold Prince
He read the story as the dehumanization of the industrial age, staged it on an iron-foundry set, and won the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical.
- LeadLen Cariou
He created the role of Sweeney Todd at the premiere and won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical.
- LeadAngela Lansbury
Playing Mrs. Lovett in the original production, moving between comedy and horror, won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical.
- ConductorPaul Gemignani
As music director of the original production and the original cast recording, Gemignani brought Sondheim’s demanding score to the stage.
I. The barber of Fleet Street
(Source) Sweeney Todd first appeared in “The String of Pearls,” a cheap serialized horror story (a penny dreadful) that ran in a weekly over the winter of 1846 into 1847. For the next hundred-odd years he remained a stock villain of London’s popular theatre, there to make audiences jump. The 1973 adaptation that playwright Christopher Bond staged at the Theatre Royal Stratford East in London had a different grain. Bond gave the barber the history of a man wrongly convicted and sent into exile, and with that the horror tale became a revenge drama. (Inspiration) Among those who saw that production was Stephen Sondheim. A composer-lyricist, he had learned to write musicals from Oscar Hammerstein II, made his name with the lyrics for “West Side Story,” and was rewriting the grammar of the form with “Company,” “Follies” and “A Little Night Music.” Sondheim said he wanted to use this story to make a show that would truly frighten an audience. He named Bernard Herrmann’s score for “Hangover Square,” a film about a serial killer, as the starting point for the work’s sound. (Production) Direction went to his longtime collaborator Harold Prince, the book to Hugh Wheeler. Prince read the story as one about the Industrial Revolution turning people into machine parts. Set designer Eugene Lee dismantled a 19th-century foundry in Rhode Island and rebuilt it on the stage. In effect, the French tradition of horror theatre that puts blood and terror openly on view (Grand Guignol) had made its way into a large Broadway house. Opening on March 1, 1979, at the Uris Theatre in New York, the show won eight Tony Awards. (Position) A few years later, “Cats” and “The Phantom of the Opera” came out of London and toured the world on spectacle. “Sweeney Todd” had already gone another way before them, as a music drama closer to opera, with far more singing than spoken dialogue.
II. The man who came back to London
(Prologue) The show opens with an ear-splitting factory whistle and a sinister organ. Then the ensemble steps forward and announces straight to the audience that it will tell them this barber’s tale. This is “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd.” Its melody carries the contour of the “Dies irae” (Day of Wrath), the chant sung at the medieval Catholic requiem mass. The song returns seven times over the course of the show, serving as a narrator that links scene to scene. (Return) Sailing back into London after fifteen years, Sweeney has at his side Anthony, the young sailor who rescued him. In “No Place Like London,” Anthony is elated, saying he has seen the whole world and found nowhere to match this city. Of the same city, Sweeney retorts that it is a festering pit. It is a scene in which the two men load nearly the same words with opposite feelings. Sweeney then tells, in “The Barber and His Wife,” how a judge took his wife and had him exiled, as though it were someone else’s old story. (Pies) Downstairs from the old barbershop on Fleet Street lives Mrs. Lovett, who keeps a pie shop. In “The Worst Pies in London,” she kneads dough, swats at bugs and never stops talking. A finely chopped accompaniment follows her busy hands and sets the comic rhythm. In the next number, “Poor Thing,” she tells what became of Sweeney’s wife. A horrifying story rides on a graceful dance in 3/4 time, and here, for the first time, the work’s habit of setting music against its content comes into view. (Reunion) When Mrs. Lovett returns the razors she had kept hidden, Sweeney speaks to them in “My Friends.” It is a tender song, sung as if to a lover. The music tells us before anything else that revenge is now the only affection he has left.
The ensemble opens the show by announcing that it will tell the audience a story. From then on it returns at each change of scene, serving as the narrator who binds the drama together.
- The outline of the medieval requiem chant “Dies irae” (Day of Wrath) lies hidden in the melody. A symbol of death is laid down from the very start.
- The ensemble, not the characters, sings directly to the house. It borrows the method of the chorus in ancient Greek theatre, which commented on events from outside the drama.
- It returns seven times during the show, its lyrics and scoring altered a little each time to mark how the story has moved on.
- In the 2007 film, the sung passages were cut and only the orchestral melody remains. It is one of the biggest differences from the stage version.
III. The caged bird
(Johanna) Walking down the street, Anthony glimpses a young woman at a window. She is Johanna, the ward Judge Turpin has taken in and raised, and Sweeney’s own daughter. In “Green Finch and Linnet Bird,” she asks the caged birds about her own captivity. A melody that trembles up and down in a high register is at once birdsong and her own plight. Anthony answers with “Johanna,” often counted among the most lyrical of Sondheim’s melodies. Yet the accompaniment repeats the same figure without a moment’s rest, letting us hear the impatience of a young man in love as well. (The judge) The judge means to marry his ward. His own “Johanna” is a chilling confession in which he flogs himself as he lays bare his desire. The number was cut during previews just before the opening and restored on the original cast recording and in later productions. (The contest) Sweeney challenges Pirelli, a barber hawking a remedy in the street, to a shaving contest and makes his name at a stroke. “Pirelli’s Miracle Elixir” and “The Contest” parody the overblown ornamentation of Italian opera singers. Laughter breaks into the middle of a grim story. Pirelli’s young assistant, Toby, also appears here for the first time. (Waiting) When the judge is slow to come, Sweeney grows frantic. Mrs. Lovett soothes him with “Wait.” It rocks low like a lullaby, but its very stillness makes it sound like the calm before the storm.
A love song sung by Anthony, smitten with Johanna at her window. In Act 2 this melody returns with an entirely different meaning.
- The vocal line flows as if drawing long breaths, while the accompaniment repeats the same short figure without pause, an ostinato that paints the impatience of an excited heart.
- In the original production, Anthony was played by Victor Garber, who would later become widely known as an actor.
- The judge has a song of the same title. His was cut during previews of the original production and restored on the recording. Over a single name, pure love and twisted desire face off.
- Remember this melody, and the moment in the Act 2 quartet when the same tune turns into a song of resignation will hurt all the more.
IV. A duet beneath the razor
(The chance) At last the judge sits down in Sweeney’s barber chair. He has come to be groomed before marrying Johanna. Razor in hand, Sweeney sings “Pretty Women” with the judge. In a song extolling the beauty of women, the two men’s voices blend warmly, yet a blade rests against one man’s throat. The tenderer the melody, the more the audience holds its breath. (Collapse) Then Anthony bursts in, blurting out his plan to run away with Johanna, and the judge storms out. Having lost a chance that will never come again, Sweeney falls apart in “Epiphany.” He cries out that everyone in the world deserves to die, and he advances on the audience, speaking to them as if offering a shave. The harshly scraping strings recall Herrmann’s “Psycho.” Amid jarringly clashing chords (dissonance), the meter and the key (the note at the center of a piece) keep collapsing, and the moment a man’s mind cracks is translated into sound. (The turn) Mrs. Lovett turns this madness into working capital. Sweeney’s need to dispose of bodies and the pie shop’s struggle with the price of meat dovetail neatly. In “A Little Priest,” which closes Act 1, the two trade puns as they liken the passersby outside the window, trade by trade, to pie fillings. The music is a jaunty waltz. Because this ghastly joke is sung as a waltz, the audience laughs and then is suddenly startled by its own laughter. (Structure) At the very point where the revenge drama turns into a tale of serial murder, Sondheim set the show’s most tragic number and its funniest side by side.
A hymn the two men sing together while the razor rests at the judge’s throat. The show’s most beautiful harmony is placed in its most dangerous spot.
- The two men’s voices blending tenderly in harmony are the exact opposite of the blade’s tension, and that mismatch creates the suspense.
- The unhurried meter makes time seem to stand still. The audience follows the song never knowing when the blade will move.
- For Sweeney it is the moment of revenge; for the judge, the giddy moment before his wedding. Over the same melody, the two men’s hearts are worlds apart.
- In the film, the duet was sung by Johnny Depp and Alan Rickman.
Having missed his chance, Sweeney falls apart and declares vengeance on the whole world. The music follows, step by step, as a character’s mind splits apart.
- The harshly scraping string introduction recalls Bernard Herrmann’s “Psycho.” Sondheim himself named Herrmann as an influence on this work.
- The meter and the key (the central note of a piece) shift constantly, and jarringly clashing chords (dissonance) follow one after another, depicting a mind that can find no bearings.
- At one point Sweeney approaches the house and speaks to the audience, so that the listener, too, cannot step aside from this madness.
- Len Cariou of the original production won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical for this role.
Act 1 ends with Mrs. Lovett's brilliant business scheme. Setting a gruesome idea to a sprightly waltz, it is the show's blackest comedy.
- A merry waltz in 3/4 time wraps a spine-chilling joke. It is built so that the audience, mid-laugh, is startled by its own laughter.
- The pair trade wordplay on one profession after another, and the number is reckoned the most dazzling showcase of Sondheim’s tightly packed rhymes (end rhymes).
- Angela Lansbury of the original production led this number with a comedian’s timing and won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical.
- The first number in which Sweeney, until now fixed on revenge alone, falls into step with Mrs. Lovett. It is also the point where their relationship changes.
V. The pie shop flourishes
(Prosperity) Act 2 opens with “God, That's Good!” Mrs. Lovett's shop is packed to bursting, and upstairs Sweeney receives his customers in a newly installed barber's chair. To an audience that knows what goes into the pies, the merrier the crowd's chorus, the colder it sounds. (Quartet) The Act 2 “Johanna” sequence is often called the musical summit of the work. Anthony wanders London in search of the imprisoned Johanna, singing once more his love song from Act 1. To the same melody Sweeney sings his resignation at never seeing his daughter again, while dispatching his customers one by one. Then the voices of Johanna and the Beggar Woman break in as well. Four people in four different places, their melodies overlapping within a single song, apart and yet together: this is where Sondheim's counterpoint (the art of weaving several melodies at once) shines brightest. (Dream) In “By the Sea,” Mrs. Lovett spins out her dream of living with Sweeney in a seaside town. It is a jaunty number in the English music-hall style, but Sweeney barely answers. Toby, the boy who has come to work for Mrs. Lovett, promises in “Not While I'm Around” to protect her. It is the gentlest melody in the entire work. (Return) The final scenes flow on in music alone, without dialogue. “Fogg's Passacaglia” in the asylum scene, the Beggar Woman's lullaby, and the Judge's return interlock without a pause. The short melodies we half-heard from the very beginning, the leitmotifs that point to each character, come back here one by one and settle into place. The ending is not set down here. Yet the skill with which the music gathers up the threads it laid from the start is enough to show how long Sondheim prepared this finale.
Anthony's love song and Sweeney's resignation, together with the voices of Johanna and the Beggar Woman, overlap within one song. It is a quartet in which four people in four different places are joined by a single melody.
- The “Johanna” melody from Act 1 returns. For Anthony it is still a song of hope, but for Sweeney it becomes a song of letting his daughter go. The same melody takes on opposite meanings.
- Through counterpoint, the art of weaving several melodies at once, different emotions are heard all at the same time. It works on the same principle as a school choir in which each section sings a different tune.
- While a beautiful melody flows, murder after murder unfolds onstage. The distance between music and scene shows the work's eeriness at its clearest.
- Here too the Beggar Woman's brief voice breaks in. Where her melody leads is worth listening for.
A song in which the boy Toby promises to protect Mrs. Lovett. Set in the middle of a blood-soaked Act 2, it is the gentlest melody of all.
- A simple, lullaby-like melody paints the guileless sincerity of a child. It is among the least ornamented numbers in the whole show.
- The more sincere Toby is, the more uneasy the listener becomes. There is an irony here: a tender song only heightens the tension.
- In the original production, Toby was played by the adult actor Ken Jennings. In the film, he is sung by a real boy, Ed Sanders, and the effect is strikingly different.
- Outside the show it is often sung on its own as a tender song. It is a fine example of a Sondheim number that sounds like an entirely different piece once lifted from its context.
VI. The ballad sung again
(Epilogue) When everything is over, the ensemble returns to sing “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd.” It is the same song that opened the show, but now the audience knows how the story ends. The chorus brings down the curtain by warning the house that this barber does not exist only onstage. The same song is heard first as a spectacle and, at the last, as an eerie mirror. (Recording) The RCA original cast album, recorded less than 2 weeks after the premiere, was a two-disc set that captured not only the songs but much of the underscoring and dialogue as well. For a cast album of the time, that scale was rare. The album won the Grammy for Best Cast Show Album and was later added to the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry. (Variations) The work has since been reborn in many forms. In the 2005 Broadway revival directed by John Doyle, the actors played instruments themselves as they performed. Tim Burton's 2007 film put Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter at the fore, cutting the songs heavily and trimming the lyrics of the ballad as well. The 2023 Broadway revival brought Jonathan Tunick's original 26-piece orchestrations back to Broadway for the first time since 1980. (Legacy) Beginning with Houston Grand Opera in 1984, followed that same year by New York City Opera and others, many opera houses have staged the work. It was also after this work appeared that the sung-through “Les Misérables” and “The Phantom of the Opera” defined an era. Sondheim died in 2021. Standing on the border between musical and opera, “Sweeney Todd” remains in the repertoire of both worlds to this day.
Lesser-known stories
(The real-person theory) Stories that Sweeney Todd was a real person are still often heard. The writer Peter Haining claimed that the barber was tried in 1801 at London's Central Criminal Court (the Old Bailey). Yet when researchers searched the trial records and newspapers of the time, no such case turned up. Today the prevailing view is that he is a fictional character invented by a serialized novel of the mid-19th century. The more popular the stage and screen versions became, the further the theory spread, so the gap between legend and record has, if anything, remained little known. (Studio craft) The 1979 original cast album was not a straightforward recording of the performance. According to Library of Congress materials, the producer Thomas Z. Shepard added factory whistles and rendered the moment something drops from the barber's chair as a whoosh and a splat that travel between the left and right speakers. He raised the tempo of songs such as “The Worst Pies in London” and gave “By the Sea” an orchestral ending different from the stage version. Shepard even used the same sound effects to make a disco version of “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd.” Because these details survive mostly in album notes, they are little known. (Restoration) The Judge's “Johanna,” sung as he flagellates himself, and part of the shaving contest scene were cut during previews before the premiere. They had been trimmed for the sake of the show's pacing, but they were restored on the album, and moved at that time to places where they fit the dramatic flow better. The version many audiences today know as the original is in fact not the first Broadway staging but one refined by way of this album. (Genre) The work is performed in opera houses too, but Sondheim was wary of the label opera. He said several times, in effect, that the genre is decided by which theater it plays in and before what audience. That it is hard to file under either opera or musical is also why the work moves freely between both stages.
Notes on terms 📚🔎
Guiding motive (leitmotif)
(Meaning) The German Leitmotiv means a leading (leit) motive (Motiv). The name itself holds the idea that a short melody leads the listener toward a particular character or idea. (In film·musical scores) A technique of attaching a short melody to a particular character, object or emotion, so that each time it returns it calls that subject to mind. In “Sweeney Todd” every character has such a melody, so that late in the show just a brief phrase tells you whose story it is. It is like a game in which the same music plays whenever the boss appears, so you know the boss has arrived without even looking at the screen.
Dies irae (day of wrath)
(Meaning) The Latin Dies irae means day (dies) of wrath (irae). The name comes from the opening words of a medieval chant about the judgment to be handed down on the last day of the world. (In film·musical scores) A plainchant once sung at the Catholic requiem Mass, whose first few notes have served in Western music as a kind of signal for death. Many composers have slipped this melody into scenes of terror or death, and Sondheim, too, worked its outline into “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd.” Just as everyone at a field day knows the relay is about to start when a certain tune comes on, longtime listeners sense the presence of death from these few notes alone.
Counterpoint
(Meaning) The Korean daewibeop (對位法) means 'the method of setting note facing (對) note.' The Latin root of the English counterpoint, punctus contra punctum, likewise means 'note against note.' (In film·musical scores) A technique of composition in which several independent melodies sound at once and are woven together so that they agree. As in the Act 2 “Johanna” sequence, it lets four characters each sing a different tune and a different emotion while still being heard as one piece of music. When friends sing a round, the same tune staggered in time without tangling, that is counterpoint at its simplest. Counterpoint goes further still, layering tunes that differ from the very start.
Dissonance
(Meaning) The Korean bulhyeopwaeum (不協和音) means 'sounds that do not (不) agree in harmony (協和).' (In film·musical scores) A combination of notes that sounds tense or grating when struck together. Composers use it deliberately to express anxiety, fear or confusion. The clashing chords of “Epiphany” sound like Sweeney's mind collapsing. Just as fingernails scraping a blackboard make the whole body flinch, dissonance tenses the listener's body first. (Elsewhere) In everyday speech the word is also used figuratively for quarrels and friction between people or groups.
Passacaglia
(Meaning) The word comes from the Spanish pasacalle, meaning to pass through (pasar) the street (calle). It is said originally to have meant a short piece played while walking through the streets. (In film·musical scores) A form in which the same short melody repeats over and over in the low register while other melodies and harmonies above it change little by little. In “Fogg's Passacaglia,” this endless repetition evokes the imprisoned time of the asylum. It is rather like jumping rope: the friends turning the rope keep the same beat while the jumper keeps changing moves.
Grand Guignol
(Meaning) French for 'big (grand) Guignol.' Guignol is the name of the hero of French puppet theater, and the name of a theater devoted to horror plays that opened in Paris in 1897 became the name of the genre. (In film·musical scores) The tradition of horror theater that shows gruesome sights such as murder and blood openly onstage. “Sweeney Todd” blends this tradition with comedy and beautiful music, making the audience laugh even as they shudder. It resembles the mood when friends trading ghost stories deliberately startle one another with a shout and then all laugh together.
Orchestral arrangement (orchestration)
(In film·musical scores) The work of deciding which instruments will play the composer's melodies and harmonies, and how they will divide them. The same song can feel completely different depending on whether the violins or the brass carry it. For “Sweeney Todd,” Jonathan Tunick orchestrated the score for a 26-piece ensemble, giving it a heavy, somber color. It is like cooking the same ingredients: whether you roast them or steam them, the taste comes out entirely different.