Sticky Notes: The Classical Music Podcast

The original production of Westside Story ran for 732 performances, spawned a movie that won 11 Academy Awards, and is still a go to on every list of the greatest Broadway Musicals ever written.  The collaboration between Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, and Jerome Robbins was a revolution on par with the collaborations of Stravinsky, Diaghilev, and Nijinsky on the Rite of Spring.  No Broadway show had ever been so gritty, so tragic, and so raw.  The first performances of Westside Story were done against the backdrop of a rise in gang violence in New York City.  The socio-economic aspects of the show were evident to everyone who watched it, and I always like to remind people that the location where Bernstein, Arthur Laurents, who adapted Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet for this show, and Sondheim imagined the story taking place is where Lincoln Center now sits, a seat of opulence and extravagance. Simply put, this was a musical, a comedy, a tragedy, a political statement, and most importantly, a stunningly