Stephen Sondheim, whose quick-witted lyrics made Broadway audiences sit up and listen in the 1950s and whose cerebral, ground-breaking shows from "Company” in 1970 to "Merrily We Roll Along” more than a decade later thrust the American musical into the modern era, has died. He was 91.
His death was confirmed by Broadway publicist Rick Miramontez. Sondheim died in his home in Roxbury, Connecticut, the New York Times reported, citing his lawyer and friend F. Richard Pappas. Sondheim had a Thanksgiving dinner with friends the day before, the paper said. Pappas couldn’t be immediately reached in his office in Austin, Texas.
Coming of age between the post-World War II era dominated on Broadway by Rodgers and Hammerstein and the post-Vietnam British invasion epitomized by Andrew Lloyd Webber, Sondheim created shows around urban sophisticates, a murderous barber and single-minded obsessives.