The great Broadway director has gone to the great white way in the sky. He was 91.
Others will write his obit. He was pivotal to the career of Stephen Sondheim – Company (1970), Follies (1971), A Little Night Music (1973), Pacific Overtures (1976), and Sweeney Todd (1979).
I saw him stage Turandot at the Vienna State Opera in 1983 at Lorin Maazel’s commission. It was his first opera and a damp squib.
He had another go at Madam Butterfly, but opera was not his Fach. He took up Bernstein, Kurt Weill, other inbetweeners.
He directed Evita and Phantom for Andrew Lloyd Webber. That worked.