Sunday in the Park with George
Sunday in the Park with George is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim . The book is by James Lapine and is inspired by the painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by the French painter Georges Seurat .
The musical premiered on July 6, 1983 by Playwrights Horizons ( Off-Broadway ). On May 2, 1984, the production was taken over by the Booth Theater on Broadway and ran there until October 13, 1985 for a total of 604 performances. In 1985 the piece was awarded the Pulitzer Prize .
This was followed by performances in Great Britain, Germany and France and in 2008 a rerun on Broadway in New York. In 1986 a recording of the original production was broadcast on US television.
action
In the first act, the musical tells the genesis of the painting A Sunday afternoon on the island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat and connects the people in the painting with Seurat's private life.
Act 2 takes place 100 years later: Seurat's grandson, also a visual artist, finds himself in a life and creative crisis that he finally overcomes by returning to the island that became famous through his grandfather's painting.
music
Sondheim transfers Seurat's pointillism into music by developing the musical themes from individual staccato tones. The work is considered the most important musical of the last decades in the USA.
Recordings
- CD: Complete recording with the cast of the world premiere in 1984 with Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters
- DVD: Recording of a performance of the original production in 1985 with Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters
literature
- Charles B. Axton, Otto Zehnder: Reclam's great musical book. Reclam, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-15-010433-5 , pp. 325-327.