Natalie Dessay in "Sweeney Todd," a performance as sharp as it is colorful
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Natalie Dessay is Mrs. Nellie Lovett in “Sweeney Todd”. KLARA BECK
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Review: At the Strasbourg Opera, an exceptional cast takes on Stephen Sondheim's horrific work. Former soprano Nathalie Dessay tells us how she approached the role of Nellie Lovett.
It's all going on in Sweeney Todd's barber shop! Once their throats are slit with a razor, the barber's chair tips the bodies into an oven, from which they emerge transformed into pie stuffing that will make the fortune of the colorful Mrs. Lovett. A double criminal enterprise, therefore, which starts with revenge, that of Sweeney Todd, alias Benjamin Barker, whose wife was once raped by the abominable Judge Turpin, who also kidnaps his daughter and reduces her to the object of his perverse desires.
Opera? Musical? According to Stephen Sondheim himself: "Dark operetta is the closest term I can find (…), in reality, 'Sweeney Todd' is a film designed for the stage." Sondheim draws his inspiration from the music of Bernard Herrmann, Alfred Hitchcock's favorite composer, but also from John Brahm ("Hangover Square", 1945). Shakespeare's "Macbeth" and "Titus Andronicus" interest him for their comb…
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