Tim Burton and Stephen Sondheim

I always get suspicious when "everyone" is recommending that I read, see, or listen to something; and my suspicions have a bad tendency to erupt into backlash. (Would I have written a more moderated and less devastating review of Gödel, Escher, Bach had a colleague not forced the book on me, at a gun-point that was powerfully metaphorical, even if it was not literal?) Consequently, I am wondering whether or not my curiosity about Tim Burton's rendering of Sweeny Todd will get the better of me, particularly since I much prefer to spend my entertainment money on "live" performances. That curiosity was dampened when the word got out that the opening chorus of the original musical had been dropped, presumably because it was too much of an artifice of the stage to fit in with Burton's vision. My immediate reaction was that this would be like hearing a performance of Beethoven's fifth symphony from which the first movement had been dropped.

However, upon reading Walter Addiego's interview with Burton in today's Chronicle, it appears that Stephen Sondheim himself did not take it that way. In the course of the interview, Burton dished out a quotation from Sondheim after an early screening:

Listen, this isn't a re-creation of the show. It's a movie based on the show. Don't have any preconceived ideas about it. Just go into it.

Still, it will be hard for me to shake the preconception based on the decision of Houston Opera to include the work in one of their seasons. In my book Sondheim has produced two works that can stand head-to-head with what was "officially" done in the name of opera during the twentieth century. Sweeny Todd is one of them, and Pacific Overtures is the other. Even if Burton has not bought into such an operatic premise, I still tend to be uncomfortable with opera in a movie house and actually prefer it on my own television set.

So, more likely than not, I shall wait until it finds its way to cable, which will probably not take very long, given the competition it will be facing at the box office. Meanwhile, I can dwell on the more interesting question of whether Burton will join the ranks of other directors best known for their films, such as Franco Zeffirelli, Ingmar Bergman, and William Friedkin, and either seek out or accept an opportunity to work on a "real" opera stage? He certainly has the visual chops for the job, along with a keen sense of what it takes to deliver a narrative; but can he work with the neurotic performers of the opera world as well as he can work with the neurotics in the movie business?