Stephen Sondheim does not consider Sweeney Todd an opera, but that doesn’t stop his 1979 musical theater masterpiece from turning up in opera houses and in semi-staged concert performances. Many of these productions lavish the same care and seriousness of purpose upon Sondheim’s vocal lines and Jonathan Tunick’s stunning orchestrations that they do with Mozart, Verdi, or Wagner, including this live 2012 Munich Radio performance. It is vividly engineered and studiously prepared from all ends, yet it falls flat dramatically and idiomatically.
The very opening, for example, starts right on the Ballad of Sweeney Todd and omits the brief yet blood-curdling organ prelude and subsequent scream. You’ll rarely hear the choral parts (some expanded from Sondheim’s original solo lines) sung to the Bavarian Radio Chorus’ spotless specifications, although their English pronunciation betrays the odd German vowel or rolled “r”. As Johanna, Rebecca Bottone sings “Green Finch and Linnet Bird” in the manner of a generic opera aria, with none of the lightness and sense of wonder that Heidi Grant Murphy brought to her 2000 New York Philharmonic performance. But the rapid-fire wordplay and passion in the duet “Kiss Me” suits her better, abetted by Gregg Baker’s authoritative Anthony (some might prefer a younger voice for this character; I find Baker fully involved and sympathetic).
Similarly, the main characters (Mark Stone as Todd, Jane Henschel as the daft pie-woman Mrs. Lovett) have beautiful voices, yet they come nowhere close to characterizing Sondheim’s brilliant texts with the multi-leveled specificity you hear from the New York Philharmonic version’s protagonists George Hearn and Patti LuPone. For example, Act 1’s closer “A Little Priest” is full of playful puns and jokes within jokes, but you’d never know it here. The same criticism can be applied to Act 2’s choral opening, although the slow tempo admittedly helps you better understand the words at first hearing. And Jonathan Best’s Judge Turpin is wonderfully sung and acted; the tonal fullness and dramatic malevolence in his “Mea Culpa” says it all. In sum, Sondheim’s musical imagination certainly comes across loud and clear, but the 1979 Original Cast Recording and aforementioned New York Philharmonic edition convey Sweeney Todd’s theatrical essence to far more vivid effect.
