In working with Stephen Sondheim as lyricist on West Side Story, Bernstein seemed to have forged an important new collaboration with an edgy young writer to contrast with his previous musicals with musical comedy writers Comden and Green. Yet the young Sondheim saw himself as a composer-lyricist, perhaps even with more of an emphasis on the music than the words, so the success of the team was short-lived. This chapter examines primary source accounts of their work together, considering how they met, what they thought of each other, and how productive their creative tensions were. The chapter also briefly addresses their other short-lived projects, including the abandoned The Exception and the Rule.

Early on, Bernstein often conducted operas (Cherubini, Bellini) and other sung stage works (Blitzstein, Weill). He would later make renowned opera recordings in New York and Vienna. His greatest contributions to the genre are three quite varied compositions. The short, all-sung Trouble in Tahiti (1952) is bitingly satirical. Candide (1956) is an operetta, with plentiful spoken dialogue. The words were provided by a half-dozen collaborators, partly for later productions (each production included a somewhat different selection of musical numbers). The entirely serious A Quiet Place (1983−86) deals with family tensions and disappointments. Its style is highly eclectic, ranging from blues to twelve-tone. A Quiet Place has one official version (in which Trouble in Tahiti becomes two interludes in Act 2) and one in which the orchestration has been reduced by Garth Edwin Sunderland. The latter omits Tahiti but restores important passages that the official version omits.

Bernstein mentioned Kurt Weill on only a few occasions, and yet his career as a composer for the stage followed a similar path. In particular, he created works that transcend the boundaries between opera and commercial theatre, tackling socio-political topics while writing melodies that reached the mainstream. This chapter traces the influence of Weill on Bernstein, who encountered Die Dreigroschenoper as a college student and would go on to conduct the premiere of Marc Blitzstein’s English adaptation, The Threepenny Opera, in 1952. The specific aesthetic traits which Bernstein absorbed from Weill’s scores are illustrated through comparative analyses of numbers from Trouble in Tahiti, Candide and West Side Story with, respectively, Lady in the Dark, Die Dreigroschenoper and Street Scene. Motivic, harmonic and structural elements of intertextuality reveal that Weill’s formal experimentation tilled the soil for works of music theatre that could be both indigenous and worldly, sophisticated and accessible.

Although the concert hall was perhaps Bernstein’s first love, musical theatre was always very close to his heart, and this chapter explores his first three works written for the Broadway stage: On the Town (1944), Wonderful Town (1953) and Candide (1956). There is an exploration of the origin and context of each show, and of the collaborative processes behind their development, from the tight team-work of On the Town and Wonderful Town to the personnel problems of Candide. The author considers the wide variety of musical styles utilized by Bernstein, particularly his blending of ‘highbrow’ and ‘lowbrow’ techniques and sounds. There is a discussion of how the stories and libretti of the three shows reflect aspects of the social, historical and political atmosphere of the time, and of the importance and influence of these early works.