LSU Opera will stage 'Night Music', where ‘Send in the Clowns’ originated

• By ROBIN MILLER
• Arts writer
• Published: Nov 1, 2009

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You’ve heard Frank Sinatra sing it. You’ve heard Judy Collins sing it.

Even Kenny Rogers has made a recording of it.

But now you’ll get a chance to hear Stephen Sondheim’s showstopper “Send in the Clowns” in its original setting. It’ll happen when LSU Opera stages A Little Night Music beginning Thursday, Nov. 5, in the Claude L. Shaver Theatre in LSU’s Music & Dramatic Arts Building.

The show isn’t actually categorized as an opera but musical theater. But it is popular among opera companies.

“I’d like to blur the line between classical opera and musical theater,” Dugg McDonough said. “There are so many great shows out there, and a lot of people don’t realize that they were written with real singers in mind. A lot of the original performers in these musicals crossed over from opera.”

McDonough is LSU Opera’s artistic director and director of this show, which is one of several Sondheim classics circulating in opera circles.

“Sweeney Todd is another of his shows that’s really popular,” McDonough said. “But Sweeney Todd is so complicated to stage. You have the barber’s chair, the trap door, the blood — there’s so much going on with the set. But I would love for us to do that production one day. I think it would be great.”

Still, performing A Little Night Music also is a great opportunity.

“A Little Night Music is as close a combination of Broadway and operetta as any show written,” McDonough said. “It’s frequently performed by outstanding operas, and it contains some of Sondheim’s best-known songs.”

Which includes what’s considered Sondheim’s most popular, “Send in the Clowns.”

“This song took off when the show opened on Broadway, and it’s been recorded by so many people,” McDonough said. “But a lot of people haven’t heard it performed in the original show.”

So again, now’s your chance. The ballad belongs to the character Desiree, who sings it in Act II while reflecting on the ironies and disappointments of her life.

Audiences were introduced to the song when A Little Night Music opened on Feb. 25, 1923, in Broadway’s Shubert Theatre. The musical was based on film director Ingmar Bergman’s comedy Smiles of a Summer Night.