Ravinia 2022, Issue 4

PAVILION 5:00 PM SUNDAY, AUGUST 7, 2022 CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA KEVIN STITES, conductor † ROB LINDLEY, host, stage director, creator BRIAN STOKES MITCHELL, vocalist HEATHER HEADLEY, vocalist ALEXANDRA BILLINGS, vocalist † DEVIN DESANTIS, vocalist SUSAN MONIZ, vocalist BETHANY THOMAS, vocalist † CHICAGO ARTISTS CHORALE † TOM VENDAFREDDO, director Yours, Stephen Sondheim Overture to Merrily We Roll Along * “Sorry/Grateful” from Company * “Flag Song” (written for Assassins ) * Brian Stokes Mitchell “Losing My Mind” from Follies Susan Moniz “Children Will Listen / No One Is Alone” from Into the Woods “Not a Day Goes By” from Merrily We Roll Along * Heather Headley “Broadway Baby” from Follies Alexandra Billings Suite from Sweeney Todd “Comedy Tonight” from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum “Not Getting Married” from Company * Brian Stokes Mitchell “Marry Me a Little” from Company * Devin DeSantis “See What It Gets You” from Anyone Can Whistle Bethany Thomas “Send In the Clowns” from A Little Night Music Heather Headley “Being Alive” from Company “I’m Still Here” from Follies Alexandra Billings “Move On” from Sunday in the Park with George Heather Headley; Brian Stokes Mitchell “Sunday” from Sunday in the Park with George Full Company † Ravinia debut * First performance at Ravinia Ravinia expresses its appreciation for the generous support of Season Sponsor the Ravinia Women’s Board . Special thanks to Judy and John McCarter for their additional support of this program. KEVIN STITES, conductor Originally from Pecatonica, IL, conductor Kevin Stites has spent six seasons as music director of the Radio City Christmas Spec- tacular and has been a regular guest with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, including for presentations of Into the Woods (2019), The Producers (2012), Guys and Dolls (2009), and Les Misérables (2008), as well as Kristen Chenoweth’s solo concert with the orchestra. He has also led the LA Phil at Walt Disney Concert Hall with Brian Stokes Mitchell, several other orchestral programs with Chenoweth, and “Do You Hear the People Sing?” concerts with Oklahoma City, Hartford, and Dallas pops orchestras. Hav- ing earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music from the University of Illinois–Urba- na-Champaign under the guidance of Ken- neth Drake and John Wustman, also serving as a graduate assistant with Opera Illinois and a Creative and Performing Arts Fellow in 1979/80, Stites has led many concerts in the Chicago area as well, including numerous Broadway tributes as a guest conductor of the Grant Park Symphony, highlighting the mu- sic of Sondheim, Bernstein, Gershwin, Lerner and Loewe, Loesser, and Porter. His Broad- way credits include On the 20th Century (2015 revival), South Pacific (Lincoln Center Theater), A Tale of Two Cities , The Color Pur- ple (music supervisor and incidental music arrangements), Titanic (original musical su- pervisor/director), Sunset Boulevard (1994), Les Misérables (2006 revival), The Threepenny Opera (2006 Roundabout revival), Fiddler on the Roof (2004 revival), Nine (2003 revival), Oklahoma! (2002 Nunn/Stroman revival), On the Town (1998 revival), and Nine to Five (additional music arrangements). Stites has also conducted on tours of Little House on the Prairie , The Color Purple , Martin Guerre , Miss Saigon , Phantom of the Opera , Les Misérables , and Titanic . Kevin Stites is making his Ravin- ia and Chicago Symphony Orchestra debuts. YOURS, STEPHEN SONDHEIM Stephen Sondheim (1930–2021) remained on the leading edge of American musical theater throughout an illustrious career spanning more than six decades. A protégé of Oscar Hammerstein II, he first claimed the spot- light as lyricist for Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story (1957) and Jule Styne’s Gypsy (1959). Sondheim demonstrated an innovative knack for musical comedy in A Funny Thing Hap- pened on the Way to the Forum (1962), his first musical as composer-librettist. The Six- ties continued with another collaboration as lyricist—Richard Rodgers’s Do I Hear a Waltz (1965)—and another convincing solo musical production, Anyone Can Whistle (1964), an innovative score that extended the traditional boundaries of musical theater. Sondheim hit his stride in the 1970s, produc- ing six more musicals and raking in five Tony Awards and two New York Drama Critics Circle Awards. That decade brought several collaborations with director-producer Har- old Prince. The sheer variety of subject mat- ter and musical style unveiled in Sondheim’s half-dozen works is staggering. Company (1970) investigated the changing relationships of five couples and their unsuccessful-in-love friend Bobby. A group of former showgirls reminisce at their old theater before it is de- molished in Follies (1971). The Viennese waltz idiom dominated the elegant score of A Lit- tle Night Music (1973). Sounds and theatrical conventions of Kabuki influenced Sondheim’s approach to Pacific Overtures (1976). His most startling and essentially operatic writing to date appeared in the grisly, Grand Guig- nol–inspired Sweeney Todd (1979). Although his productivity slowed in the next two decades, Sondheim continued to lead musical theater into new directions. Merrily We Roll Along (1981) traces the decades-long relationship of three friends, in reverse chronology from the disenchantments of adulthood backward to the bright flush of youth. Sondheim’s lyrical investigation of the artistic process— Sunday in the Park with George (1984), based on Georges Seurat’s painting Un dimanche après-midi à l’Île de la Grande Jatte , currently owned by the Art Institute of Chicago—received a New York Drama Critics Circle Award and the covet- ed Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Fairy-tale land goes haywire in the hilarious Into the Woods (1987). Assassins (1991) probes the twisted minds of presidential assassins and would- be assassins. Then came the operatic score to Passion (1994), Sondheim’s third collabora- tion with writer and director James Lapine, who earlier contributed the books for Sunday in the Park with George and Into the Woods . –Program notes © 2022 Todd E. Sullivan RAVINIA MAGAZINE • AUGUST 1 – AUGUST 14, 2022 32