Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1979 Original Broadway Cast) [Cast Recording, Extra tracks, Original recording remastered]

Stephen Sondheim (Artist), Len Cariou (Artist), Angela Lansbury (Artist) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 20, 2007)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 2
• Format: Cast Recording, Extra tracks, Original recording remastered
• Label: RCA
• ASIN: B0009941IE
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (111 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,360 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #59 in Music > Broadway & Vocalists > Musicals > General

Track Listings

Disc: 1

1. The Ballad Of Sweeney Todd

2. No Place Like London

3. The Worst Pies In London

4. Poor Thing

5. My Friends

6. The Ballad Of Sweeney Todd

7. Gren Finch And Linnet Bird

8. Ah, Miss

9. Johanna

10. Pirelli's Miracle Elixir

See all 17 tracks on this disc

Disc: 2

1. Pretty Women

2. Epiphany

3. A Little Priest

4. God, That's Good!

5. Johanna

6. By The Sea

7. Not While I'm Around

8. The Judge's Return

9. The Ballad Of Sweeney Todd

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com essential recording

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

Product Description

Nothin' like tappin' your toes and whistlin' along as people are murdered and turned into meat pies, huh?! Sondheim's ghoulish smash won Tonys for Best Musical, Best Original Score and one each for Angela Lansbury and Len Cariou. Two bonus tracks (from Sondheim: A Celebration at Carnegie Hall ) and a hidden track, too!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Operatic Masterpiece of the American Musical Theater, September 17, 2000

By 

Lawrance M. Bernabo (The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1979 Original Broadway Cast) (Audio CD)

"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.

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Epic in its scope, with an incomparable score, May 8, 2003

By 

Jeff Crosley (Atlanta, GA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1979 Original Broadway Cast) (Audio CD)

This review is by Crosley

Stephen Sondheim is my favorite composer and lyricist, and he is incredibly good at both. Sweeney Todd is the best of his works, and 50 years from now, Sondheim will be the Mozart to Andrew Lloyd Webber's Salieri. Once day, the muddled masses will lose the perception that show tunes have to be repetitive enough to get stuck in your head and trivially escapist, and will recognize Sondheim and his phenomenal talent for what it is: genius.

What makes Sweeney so good is the sheer complexity of the score, plot, characters, and message. The show, on one level, is about murder and cannibalism. Deeper, it's about vengeance. Still deeper, it's about the breakdown of an ordered society. Even deeper than that, it's about the nature of good, evil, justice, the terrible dark side to the Industrial Revolution, and the corruption of innocence. The show's wealth of topics and moral questions is infinite, and I personally have had many a debate with myself and others about this show and the questions proposed. Told in such an unconventional, uncompromising, and graphic manner, the messages are that much more powerful.

The score may not be the most "hummable" (whatever that means) score you come across, but it is unbelievably deeper, stronger, and more intelligent than "hummable" shows, like The Phantom of the Opera, Les Miserables, Jekyll and Hyde, etc. I notice something new every time I listen. Sondheim never writes songs just so they can be pop hits (*cough* Webber). He always writes the song perfectly in context with what's happening in the plot. Thus, very few of his songs can be taken out of context, but in context (which is how they're supposed to be) they are phenomenal. His use of melody, harmony, subtle key changes, and time signatures are staggering, breaking down all barriers of conventional musical theater. For example, near the end of the show (I won't specify the context so I don't spoil the plot), Sweeney is singing a near funeral dirge in big, 8/4 bars, while Mrs. Lovett is frantically singing in 3/4. Yes, this is going on at the same time, and the result is nothing short of perfection. Along those lines, the music always suits the character. Consider the differences between Mrs. Lovett's songs to Sweeney's. Mrs. Lovett (who I consider to be far more evil than Sweeney) always sings quickly paced, oftentimes cheerful numbers (The Worst Pies in London, By the Sea), or she sings complacently and laid back (Wait). Sweeney, on the other hand, is either brooding (Johanna, The Barber and his Wife, My Friends), or disturbingly intense and enraged (Epiphany). Again, the music is used to enhance the characters and plot, not the other way around.

Speaking of which, the characters are wonderfully multidimensional. Nearly all of them have several sides to them that makes very few characters only good or only evil. The second song in the show called "Johanna" (the one sung by the Judge) offers several dimensions to Judge Turpin within three and a half minutes that are otherwise missing. With the song, we see the Judge's struggle between his faith, his lust for Johanna, and his S&M fettish. The song is often cut because of its bizarre and disturbing nature, but when left intact, the Judge becomes a much deeper character. All of the music is used to further the plot and establish/add dimensions to characters, rather than a traditional musical where the action stops dead for a song, then resumes after the applause. "Epiphany" is absolutely breathtaking, and listening (or watching, I have the recording) to Sweeney go mad right then and there is always exhilerating and frightening.

I recommend this CD to everyone, especially those looking for a kind of intelligent and cerebral theater not seen on Broadway since the curtain closed on Passion. The show and score is superior to all of today's major hits like Cats, The Phantom of the Opera, Les Miserables, Jekyll and Hyde, The Scarlett Pimpernell, The Producers (funny as it is), The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, Mama Mia, etc. Do musical theater a favor and discover this phenomenal show. If the Amercian Musical is to survive the next decade or so, it will need people to have a knowledge and appreciation for great musical theater.

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best, most entertaining musicals ever, April 14, 2000

By 

Patrick G. Varine "Make beats, not war, haha..." (Georgetown, Delaware) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1979 Original Broadway Cast) (Audio CD)

Stephen Sondheim is my hero for scoring this musical. "Sweeney Todd" is most definitely one of the top five musicals of all time, if not THE top musical, at least in my opinion.

The blackly humorous and gruesome story of a barber who goes berserk with revenge after being wrongly imprisoned is one of the most original stories I've ever heard. I don't want to spoil the musical for anyone who hasn't seen it, but let me just say that the method by which Sweeney and his accomplice (Mrs. Lovett, played with tremendous hilarity by Angela Lansbury) dispose of the bodies is horrid and hilarious at the same time.

The music is truly inspiring. Sondheim's score consists of sweet love songs, frightening ballads of redemption and overall great music, all puncuated by the deafening pierce of a factory whistle (which sounds each time Sweeney claims another victim).

Len Cariou played Sweeney almost to perfection, balancing the tender man who loves his daughter to no end with the homicidal maniac who can't wait to get his hands (or his razor, rather) on the Judge who put him away (As the Judge sits down on the barber stool, Sweeney tells him the shave will be "the closest I ever gave").

This is an utterly fantastic musical, and if you are into Sondheim this is the ultimate treat. Check it out.