Harold Prince scores 1955-1983

ArchivalResource

Harold Prince scores, 1955-1983

Harold Prince scores 1955-1983

http://archives.nypl.org/mus/20328

Harold Prince (b. 1928), is a producer and director of theater, film and opera, but is best known for his work on Broadway musicals. Prince, who is commonly known as Hal Prince, began his career in 1948 as an assistant in the office of Broadway director and producer George Abbott. During his early years with Abbott, he made valuable connections with Robert E. Griffith, who would later become his producing partner and Ruth Mitchell, who would be his longtime assistant and production supervisor. Griffith and Prince scored a huge success in their first producing project, The Pajama Game (1954) and had many subsequent Broadway hits until Griffith's death in 1961. Prince began directing with the play, A Family Affair (1962). He has gone on to have a notably prolific career, directing and/or producing many landmark Broadway musicals, including Cabaret (1966), West Side Story (1957), Fiddler on the Roof (1964), Follies (1972), Evita (1979) Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1979) and The Phantom of the Opera (1987). Principal collaborators on musical theater productions include the songwriters Stephen Sondheim; Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick; John Kander and Fred Ebb; Larry Grossman; Betty Comden and Adolph Green; and Andrew Lloyd Webber. In addition to musicals and plays, Prince also has directed operas and two feature films, and appeared in many documentaries and tributes; in 1974 he published an autobiography, Contradictions: Notes on Twenty-Six Years in the Theatre. This collection consists of scores to Broadway musicals directed and produced by Harold Prince from the 1950s through the 1980s, arranged alphabetically by show title and by song title within each show. In the cases of Sweeney Todd and certain conductor scores for A Doll’s Life, as noted, where the complete score existed, it has been left in running order. The bulk of the collection consists of scores from A Doll’s Life, by Larry Grossman and Betty Comden and Adolph Green, including oversized conductor scores and full orchestra parts. The collection also covers, with near completeness the scores to Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s Evita, (1979) Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick’s She Loves Me (1963) and Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music, (1973) Side by Side by Sondheim (1977) and Sweeney Todd (1979). Items of special interest in the collection are unused materials from A Doll’s Life and Pacific Overtures.

26 linear feet (35 boxes)

The New York Public Library. Music Division.