Stephen Sondheim's masterpiece of missed connections — all desire, wit, and waltzes.
Inspired by Ingmar Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night, a tangled web of affairs is weaved around actress Desirée Armfeldt and the men who love her: lawyer Fredrik Egerman and Count Carl-Magnus Malcom. When Desirée's show travels through Fredrik's town, the estranged lovers' passion rekindles.
Acting
Sally Ann Howes owns every frame with theatrical precision.
Writing
Sondheim's lyrics — dense, witty, devastatingly human.
Score
Triple meter waltzes that seduce and unsettle simultaneously.
Director
Kirk Browning
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
This 1990 filmed performance preserves the NYC Opera staging; Sondheim himself considered this score his most structurally perfect work.
Bergman's original film Smiles of a Summer Night (1955) was his first commercial hit — Sondheim and librettist Hugh Wheeler kept the summer solstice setting but sharpened the sexual politics for 1973 Broadway.
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