Ravinia 2019, Issue 3, Week 6

WEST SIDE STORY Program note by Steven Smith More than 50 years after the release of its inter- nationally beloved screen adaptation, West Side Story , the winner of 10 Academy Awards, re- turns this weekend to Ravinia with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. In 1955, a conducting engagement at the Hol- lywood Bowl brought 36-year-old composer Leonard Bernstein to Los Angeles. That August, a chance meeting at the Beverly Hills Hotel with playwright Arthur Laurents reignited the two artists’ stalled plan to collaborate on a musical. Seven years earlier, choreographer/director Jerome Robbins had approached Bernstein with what the composer called in his diary “a noble idea: a modern version of Romeo and Juliet set in slums at the coincidence of Easter and Passover celebrations. Feelings run high between Jews and Catholics. … Street brawls, double death— it all fits.” The idea lay dormant until that day in 1955, when an LA newspaper headline about Latino gang problems inspired an exciting new path. With the hiring of 25-year-old composer Stephen Sondheim, who reluctantly signed on to provide lyrics only, the final pieces fell into place. After two years of rewriting and struggles to raise financing, West Side Story opened on Broadway in 1957, eliciting reactions that ranged from passionate raves to stunned walk-outs. The latter were sparked by the musical’s depiction of gang warfare and prejudice, as well as its near unprecedented body count for a musical on the Great White Way. The show was largely snubbed at the Tony Awards in favor of a more accessible rival, The Music Man . Nevertheless, audiences in New York and London (where the show was an instant smash) quickly caught up with the innovations of Rob- bins’s explosive, character-driven choreography, Laurents’s ingenious transposition of Shake- speare, and the thrilling Bernstein score, with lyrics by Sondheim that included “Tonight” and “Maria.” When Robbins and Robert Wise joined forces to co-direct the 1961 screen version for United Artists, starring box office favorite Na- talie Wood and Richard Beymer ( The Diary of Anne Frank ), the result was one of the decade’s greatest commercial and critical triumphs. The film’s co-stars, George Chakiris (Bernar- do) and Rita Moreno (Anita), took home Acad- emy Awards for Best Supporting Actor and Ac- tress. Their victories were echoed by Oscars for Best Art Direction–Set Decoration, Color; Best Cinematography, Color; Best Costume Design, Color (winner Irene Sharaff also worked on the Broadway original); Best Film Editing; Best Mu- sic, Scoring of a Musical Picture; Best Sound; Best Director (for both Robbins and Wise, the first time this award was shared); and Best Pic- ture. Robbins also received an honorary Acade- my Award “for his brilliant achievements in the art of choreography on film.” More than half a century after its original release, West Side Story the motion picture will be presented tonight in a format that brings its own innovations. MGM has created a restored, high-definition print of the film that reveals de- tails unseen since 1961. A new sound technol- ogy developed by Paris-based Audionamix and utilized by Chace Audio by Deluxe, one of the film industry’s top restoration companies, has isolated vocal tracks from the feature using new source-separation technology that separates The first page of “The Rumble” from the manuscript full score for West Side Story by film orchestrators Sid Ramin and Irwin Kostal—no complete full score of the 1961 film has ever been located JULY 8 – JULY 14, 2019 | RAVINIA MAGAZINE 95