Lyric Opera Ensemble to feature Sondheim music

For years, Robert Breault has been wanting to do something by Stephen Sondheim but the time never seemed right. Until now, that is. "Sondheim will be coming to Kingsbury Hall next February and I thought this would be the perfect time to do a program of just his works," Breault told the Deseret News.

And so this Friday and Saturday, the University of Utah's Lyric Opera Ensemble will be doing a program devoted to the music of one of America's best-known and most popular Broadway composers.

"He's done so many shows, but you don't get to see enough of them around here," Breault said. "A few years ago Utah Opera did 'A Little Night Music' and recently Hale did 'Into the Woods,' but that's about it."

For their program, the students in the ensemble, which Breault directs, will be singing selections from several of Sondheim's hit shows, including "A Little Night Music" and "Into the Woods," two shows that are perhaps his best-known and most-frequently done, and also "Company," the little known "Passion" and his early "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum." "It's going to please the audience and ourselves," Breault promised. "Our two-hour show is a pretty comprehensive look at Sondheim's work from start to finish. It'll give a good idea of what he is about."

And this also gives all of the students in the group a chance to perform. "It really brings out the talent we have here," he said.

Culling individual songs and ensemble pieces from Sondheim's scores proved to be challenging, Breault admitted. "We extracted scenes and numbers, but it was hard. Jeff (pianist Jeffrey Price) and I had to do some rearranging to make everything work."

Stylistically, Sondheim's music isn't easily categorized. "There are some very operatic elements in some of his works." But the shows run the gamut, from farce ("A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum") to operetta ("A Little Night Music") to Victorian melodrama ("Sweeney Todd"). "Each show is refracted through another show that we know," Breault said. "He takes something that is familiar and turns it into his own. It's stunning how he can do it."

And while most of the students in the Lyric Opera Ensemble have grown up with opera and aspire to become professional opera singers, they've discovered that there's a lot in Sondheim they can appreciate. "The kids have really dug into it. For one thing because the characters in his shows are so close to home they could be your neighbors, and for the other, because his rhythms are fun. He doesn't write operatic diction, but contemporary speech patterns and the kids have really enjoyed that."