With its first word, "Remember?" A
Little
Night Music (1973) offers an invitation to a past era of elegance
and
enchantment. Stephen Sondheim's previous collaborations with director
Hal
Prince, Company (1970) and Follies (1971), were notable
for their
contemporary New York setting. This time they took audiences back to
turn-of-the-century Scandinavia where love, laughter, and music float
through
the air on evening breezes in a land where the sun never sets.

A

Little Night Music developed from this team's desire to write a
chamber
opera about romance and foolishness, an idea first conceived during West
Side
Story (for which Sondheim was lyricist and Prince producer). For
source
material they decided to use Ingmar Bergman's bittersweet film Smiles
of a
Summer Night (1956) but agreed that their work should be an original
musical
suggested by the film's story. 

Prince, Sondheim, and book-writer
Hugh Wheeler
did not, however, agree entirely on the direction the new piece should
go.
Sondheim began composing dark music in keeping with the mood of the
film,
“almost out of Strindberg. I usually love to write in dark colors about
basic
gut feelings, but Hal has a sense of audience that I sometimes lose when
I'm
writing. He wanted the darkness to peep through a whipped-cream surface.
. . and
of course, he was right” (Zadan 202). Prince conceived the show as “a
kind of
Chekhovian musical” beginning lowly with much exposition (Prince 174).
In
retrospect Sondheim denies any such connections: "I don't think Chekhov
and
music go together at all” (interview). Hugh Wheeler recollects that his
inspiration came not from Chekhov but Shakespeare in a line by Puck:
"Lord, what
fools these mortals be.” 

This difference in opinion does
not bother
Wheeler: “Three individuals, when they collaborate, can remain
individuals and I
think that is the way it should be. A work need not be splintered if, as
in this
case, the book writer is thinking of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the
director of Chekhov and the composer of something else. With any luck
what comes
out is the richer for the variety of visions” (letter). This wealth of
visions
arising from four creative minds provides thematic tensions which run
through
the musical. The following discussion looks at three: action versus
inaction,
man versus woman, and dignity versus folly.


CHARLOTTE:
Every day a little death
In the parlor, in the bed
In the
curtians, in the silver
In the buttons, in the bread
Every day a little
sting
In the heart and in the head
Every move and every breath
And you
hardly feel a thing
Brings a perfect little death

He smiles
sweetly
Strokes my hair
Says he misses me
I would murder him right
there
But first I die
He talks softly of his wars
And his horses
And
his whores
I think loves a dirty buissness

ANNE:
So do I
So do
I

CHARLOTTE:
I'm before him on my knees
And he kisses me
He
assumes I'll loose my reason
And I do
Men are stupid
Men are
vain
Love's disgusting
Love's insane
A humiliating
business

ANNE:
Oh how true

CHARLOTTE
Ah well
Everyday a
little death

ANNE:
Every day a little death

CHARLOTTE:
In
the parlor, in the bed

ANNE:
In the looks and in the
acts

CHARLOTTE:
In the curtains, in the silver
In the buttons, in
the bread

ANNE:
In the murmurs, in the gestures
In the pauses, in
the sighs

CHARLOTTE:
Every day a little sting

ANNE:
Every
day a little dies

CHARLOTTE:
In the heart and in the
head

ANNE:
In the looks and in the
lies

CHARLOTTE&ANNE:
Every move and every breath
And you hardly
feel a thing
Brings a perfect little...
Death