Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Attend The Tale Of Sweeney Todd
2. Tale Of Sweeney Todd
3. No Place Like London
4. Barber And His Wife
5. Worst Pies In London
6. Poor Thing
7. My Friends
8. Lift Your Razor High Sweeney
9. Green Finch And Linnet Bird
10. Ah Miss Johanna
11. Pirelli's Miracle Elixir
12. Contest
13. Sweeney Pondered And Sweeney Planned
14. Wait
15. His Hands Were Quick His Fingers Strong
16. Johanna
17. Kiss Me
18. Ladies In Their Sensitivities
19. Quartet
20. Pretty Women
21. Epiphany
22. Little Priest

Disc 2:

1. God That's Good
2. Johanna
3. By The Sea
4. Wigmaker Sequence
5. Sweeney's Waited Too Long Before
6. Letter
7. Not While I'm Around
8. Parlour Songs/City On Fire
9. Attend The Tale Of Sweeney Todd (1)
10. Johanna
11. Little Priest
12. Not While I'm Around

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6012 in Music
• Released on: 2007-05-28
• Number of discs: 2
• Formats: Extra tracks, Original recording remastered, Soundtrack
• Running time: 117 minutes

From Amazon.com
Despite being known for her televised sleuthing these days, Angela Lansbury once managed to both spook and delight Broadway audiences as the maker of very particular delicacies in Victorian London. In this macabre extravaganza, Lansbury's Nellie Lovett is the accomplice of Len Cariou's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. After he slashes his victims, she turns them into her meat pies' main ingredient. For this most ghoulish of shows, Sondheim looked for inspiration in the way the music is used in horror and suspense movies, particularly in the soundtracks of Bernard Herrmann. The winner of nine Tony Awards in 1979, Sweeney Todd may not be Sondheim's most accessible score, but its operatic complexity (it is almost entirely sung-through) makes it darkly spellbinding. --Elisabeth Vincentelli

Customer Reviews

A brilliant record of a brilliant show!
Not your typical Broadway musical, Sweeney Todd marked Stephen Sondheim's transition from more traditional shows to larger, almost operatic enterprises. To my mind, it is Sondheim's most satisfying achievement. I saw Sweeney shortly after it opened on Broadway and it remains one of my most vivid theatrical memories. This double CD set goes a long way towards recreating that magic. The story of a wrongly-accused barber who returns to London in search of his beloved wife and daughter and, not finding them, turns to slitting his customers' throats and turning them into pies might not sound like the basis of an enjoyable experience. But Sweeney Todd has just the right combination of Victorian melodrama, high camp, low characters and very dark humour to draw anyone into its spell. And then there is the music. While not the sort of Rodgers & Hammerstein score in which every other song becomes a standard, there are still plenty of musical highlights - such as the comic "Worst Pies in London", the macabre "A Little Priest", the beguiling "Johanna", and the surprisingly tender "Not While I'm Around". The songs are all integral to the plot and this double CD set is a virtual recreation of the show. The performances are all excellent - a reminder that Angela Lansbury did some quite good things before she became a television sleuth. But towering above everyone is Len Cariou as Sweeney in a performance so magnificent that you wonder why he was never so good again. Maybe because he never did another Sondheim musical. And Sondheim is the real star here. Listen to Sweeney Todd by all means. But not alone - and certainly not in the dark!

The Operatic Masterpiece of the American Musical Theater
"Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" is closer to the operatic world of Verdi and Donezetti than it is to Rogers & Hammerstein or Lerner & Lowe, and there have been times when it has been performed in opera houses as well it should. This show is replete with arias and quintets, duets and chorus numbers. More than any other American "musical" I can think of, there are different characters singing different things at the same time, just what you would expect to find in an opera. Besides, like an opera, most of the main characters are dead by the time the curtain rings down.

This is Sondheim at his best, coming up with some of his most beautiful melodies in a show where the "hero" and "heroine" cut people's throats and bake them into pies. Consequently while you have "Not While I'm Around" sung by a poor boy to his surrogate mother and "Johanna" sung by young Anthony to his intended, you also have "My Friends" sung by Todd to his set of sharp razors. Sondheim has always delighted in such ironies. The highlight of the show/CD is the trio of numbers that ends Act I. From the sweet duet between Todd and the Judge ("Pretty Women"), to the savage intensity of Todd's "Epiphany", concluding with the ghastly humor of the Todd and Mrs. Lovett in "A Little Priest."

Angela Lansbury is a wicked delight as Mrs. Lovett, and a revelation to those who do not remember that she was always a strong performer in musical theater ("Mama," "Gypsy"). The appropriateness of her voice was driven home to me when I saw a road production of "Sweeney Todd" with June Havok (yes, the original Baby June, older sister of Gypsy Rose Lee) who had the great timing of the vaudeville stage but who sang everything about an octave lower than originally written. However, it is Len Cariou who steals the show. "Epiphany" is a dramatic tour de force made all the more wonderous by the fact that it is being sung. If only I could sing, this would be the role I would most want to perform and "Epiphany" the song I would most love to sing.

One of the joys of this 2-disc set is that it includes the song "Johanna" which was cut from the show, which has the Judge (Edmund Lyndeck) flagellating himself while sneaking a peak at his young ward through a keyhole. Similarly, the entire original version of "The Contest" is presented. Warning: in this production a steam whistle is used, primarily when Sweeney draws his razor across somebody's throat, in a particularly effective bit of stagecraft. If you listen to the opening song with the volume up too high, you are going to get blown away.

GREAT RECORD OF A GREAT SHOW
I have seen many Sweeneys over the years from Alun Armstrong (wonderful actor, perhaps not the greatest singer) to Sir Tom Allen (excellent on both fronts but in an overblown production), from George Hearn and Dennis Quilley (both a bit too musical-comedy) to Paul Hegarty in the slimmed down Watermill production - and not forgetting Leon Greene in a memorable production at the theatre where Sondheim first saw the play that sparked off his interest in the story. But the most complete Sweeney of all is still the creator of the role, Len Cariou. His Epiphany remains one of the scariest things I have ever seen in a theatre, with a wonderfully in-tune out-of-tune climax. No-one made the humour of A Little Priest blacker, the dreamy amorality of Are You Beautiful As Her more heartbreakingly poignant or rose to such truly tragic heights at his cathartic moment of discovery in the finale. All of this is admirably captured on this original cast recording.

Is Sweeney Todd an opera or a musical? And ultimately, does it matter which pigeon-hole you put it in? True, it is through-composed - but then so are Evita and Les Mis. True, it is thematically very tightly organised with recurring leitmotifs (especially the plainsong Dies Irae references) - but so are most of Sondheim's mature theatre pieces. True it handles darker, more tragic material than we're used to in Broadway musicals, but again that's Sondheim for you. None of that makes it an opera. And the productions that opera houses have put on amply demonstrate that it is a work that demands singing ACTORS, not acting singers. And that, most assuredly, is what Cariou is here.

Sweeney Todd stands or falls by it eponymous anti-hero and, unusually for Sondheim, the other characters are less rounded, have less depth, are more stereotyped than the lead. However, Angela Lansbury, long-time Sondheim interpreter, gives what is also just about the definitive performance as Mrs. Lovett, maker of the worst pies in London and subsequently instigator of the unique recipe for the best. Her British origins mean she has just the right handle on the Victorian Parlour Songs and the music-hall exuberance of By the Sea. But she can also match Cariou pun for outrageous pun in numbers like Little Priest. The rest of the cast, too are just about as good as you'll find - though I can't resist a slightly nostalgic gaze back at Adrian Lester as the young sailor, Anthony.

All in all, for a great record of a great show with an outstanding central performance from Cariou, look no further.