Broadway legend Stephen Sondheim dies at age 91

Broadway composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim, who helped American musical theater evolve beyond pure entertainment to new artistic heights with such works as “Love, Sublime Love”, “Ways of the Forest” and “Sweeney Todd: The Barber Fleet Street Devil,” died this Friday at home, aged 91, reported the New York Times.

Sondheim, whose eight Tony Awards trump any other composer, started early, learning the art of musical theater when he was just a teenager with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II of “The Sound of Music.”

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a tweet this Friday about Sondheim: “One of the brightest lights on Broadway went out tonight. May he rest in peace”.

Actress and singer Anna Kendrick called Sondheim’s death “a devastating loss.”

“Acting on his work has been one of the greatest perks of my career,” Kendrick added in a tweet.

Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator of “Hamilton” and pupil of Sondheim, described the master as the greatest lyricist in musical theater.

Sondheim’s most successful musicals have included “Ways of the Forest,” which opened on Broadway in 1987 and used children’s fairy tales to untangle adult obsessions, and the 1979 thriller “Weeney Todd: The Devil’s Barber of Fleet Street” about a a murderous barber in London whose victims are served as meat pies; and 1962’s A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, a Vaudeville-style comedy set in ancient Rome

“I love theater as much as music, and the whole idea of ​​reaching out to an audience and making them laugh, making them cry – just making them feel – is paramount to me,” Sondheim said in a 2013 interview with US National Public Radio.

Several of Sondheim’s hit musicals have been made into films, including “Ways of the Forest,” starring Meryl Streep, and “Sweeney Todd,” starring Johnny Depp. A new film version of “Amor, Sublime Amor”, for which Sondheim wrote the lyrics to the song by Leonard Bernstein, which will premiere next month.