The New York Times International - 02.08.2019

2 | F RIDAY, AUGUST 2, 2019 THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION

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fith; it reached 20 in 1995 with his direc- tion of an extravagant revival of “Show Boat,” the landmark 1927 musical by Je- rome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II adapted from Edna Ferber’s novel about life on a Mississippi steamship. Often considered the foundation of the modern musical for its character de- velopment and melding of score and story, “Show Boat” was a fitting valedic- tory — though not quite his final show — for a man who helped expand the possi- bilities of narrative in the musical theater form. Mr. Prince was known, especially in the first decades of his theater life, as a fiendish workaholic; at one point, in 1960, three shows that he produced were appearing on Broadway at the same time.

He was known, too, for his collabora- tions with a murderer’s row of creative talents, among them the choreo- graphers Bob Fosse, Jerome Robbins, Michael Bennett and Susan Stroman, the designers Boris Aronson, Eugene Lee, Patricia Zipprodt and Florence Klotz, and the composers Leonard Bernstein, John Kander, Stephen Sond- heim and Andrew Lloyd Webber. Mr. Sondheim was Mr. Prince’s most frequent confederate and Mr. Webber his most profit-generating, with their work together on “Evita,” about the op- portunistic Argentine populist Eva Pe- ron, and on “The Phantom of the Opera,” which Mr. Prince directed in London and on Broadway. His productions were often large in every sense, their emotional resonance heightened by grandiose or otherwise audacious performances (Patti LuPone in “Evita,” Elaine Stritch in Mr. Sond- heim’s “Company”) and dazzling, opu- lent design; think of the swooping chan- delier in “Phantom” or the Rube Goldberg-esque human-flesh-to-meat- pie mechanism in “Sweeney Todd.”

“VISUAL IMAGINATION” “The two things that characterize him most are energy and impatience,” Mr. Sondheim said in an interview for this obituary in 2016. At the time, Mr. Prince, at 89, was preparing to direct Leonard Bernstein’s “Candide” (a show he directed on Broadway in 1982) for the New York City Opera. “He trained as a stage manager,” Mr. Sondheim added, “and he learned the business from the ground up, so he knows how to order a pair of shoes, which many producers don’t.” He continued: “A visual imagination is, if not his greatest strength, then one of them. He sees things visually first, and he knows what a show looks like in his head before he takes it on.” As both a producer and a director, Mr. Prince was a nurturer of unproved tal- ent. Tom Bosley, for instance, later known as Howard Cunningham on the nostalgic television sitcom “Happy Days,” won a Tony in his first starring role in 1959 as the titular mayor of New York, La Guardia, in “Fiorello!” Liza

Minnelli made her first Broadway ap- pearance — and won a Tony — as the ti- tle character in “Flora, the Red Men- ace,” a 1965 politically inflected musical set in 1935 about a spunky fashion de- signer who falls for a Communist. Produced by Mr. Prince and directed by George Abbott, “Flora” also featured the first Broadway score by the songwriting team of John Kander and Fred Ebb, who later wrote “Chicago” and two shows produced and directed by Mr. Prince: “Zorba” and “Cabaret.” “Cabaret” was a turning point in the musical theater form at a time when the relevance of Broadway was at a low ebb. Times Square, the center of Manhattan’s — and hence America’s — theater district, had begun its slide into forbidding disrepair. Rock ’n’ roll was in ascend- ance, taking over the airwaves and dis- placing show music as the soundtrack of American popular culture. And forces like the antiwar movement, civil rights, the sexual revolution and mind-expand- ing drugs had created a countercultural moment that made it easy for audiences — especially younger ones — to reject an art form associated with previous generations and a sunny acceptance of the status quo.

DAWN OF THE “CONCEPT MUSICAL” “Cabaret” was among the first of the so- called concept musicals — shows orga- nized around ideas rather than the telling of a pure story. It heralded a new era in the musical and a new strain in Mr. Prince’s work, one that became especially evident in his shows with Mr. Sondheim, which explored darker, more harrowing elements of the human experience than had generally been por- trayed on the musical stage. “Since the concept musical was still in a formative stage, this was a schizo- phrenic show,” the critic and Broadway historian Martin Gottfried later wrote. “One half of it was an orthodox musical play whose story unfolded in dramatic scenes with duly integrated book songs. The other half, however, startled and changed Broadway.” The arc of Mr. Prince’s career was un- usual, but it began like many show business careers, with good fortune and a lift from an old hand. In his case the mentor was Mr. Abbott, the great producer-director-writer for whom Mr. Prince worked in the late 1940s as an office assistant and later on shows Mr. Abbott directed. Mr. Prince was an assistant stage manager on a 1949 Abbott presentation, the musical “Touch and Go.” And after a stint in the Army, he was the stage manager for “Wonderful Town” (1953), the Tony-winning musical, directed by Mr. Abbott, about a pair of sisters arriving in New York from Ohio. It starred Rosalind Russell and featured music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green. When Mr. Prince and Robert Griffith, another stage manager in the Abbott stable, acquired the rights to a novel, “7½ Cents,” by Richard Bissell, Mr. Ab- bott and Mr. Robbins shared the directing chores for the show that emerged from the book, “The Pajama Game,” a romantic comedy set amid a labor dis- pute at a pajama factory. And when Mr. Prince and his fellow fledgling

producers fell short in raising the money — because neither they nor the choreographer, Mr. Fosse, the composer, Rich- ard Adler, nor one of the chorus girls, Shirley MacLaine, were as yet bankable names — Mr. Abbott kicked in the needed cash. From there followed a remarkable string of musicals presided over by the Prince-Griffith producing team, among them the baseball fantasy story “Damn Yankees”; “New Girl in Town”, an adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s lusty drama “Anna Christie;’’ and “Fiorello!” All were directed by Mr. Abbott, and each ran more than a year.

TEAMING WITH SONDHEIM Mr. Prince and Mr. Sondheim, whose mentor was Oscar Hammerstein, met in 1949 at the Broadway opening of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “South Pacific,” and their friendship and aspirations ran parallel throughout the 1950s. Mr. Sondheim has said that the only autobiographical song he ever wrote was “Opening Doors,” from “Mer- rily We Roll Along,” a 1981 flop directed by Mr. Prince that was their final Broad- way collaboration; the song, about two young men and a young woman looking to make their mark in New York, was based, Mr. Sondheim acknowledged, on himself, Mr. Prince and their friend Mary Rodgers, a daughter of Richard Rodgers. The relationship between the two men became a professional one with “West Side Story” (1957), the now-fa- mous urban adaptation of “Romeo and Juliet.” At the time, Mr. Sondheim was a still young Broadway lyricist working with venerable partners — the composer Leonard Bernstein, the book writ-

er Arthur Laurents and the Mr. Robbins, the choreographer and director — when he called his friend Mr. Prince to com- plain that the show was in trouble. Their producer, Cheryl Crawford, had dropped the project, Mr. Sondheim said. Mr. Prince and Mr. Griffith took over the show, which ended up as a striking departure from the conventional book musicals of the day, with its tragic events, adventurous, modern score and the use of choreography (by Mr. Rob- bins) to propel the narrative. A harbin- ger of later developments in the stage musical, “West Side Story” was a landmark Broadway production, though it won only two Tony Awards, one for Mr. Robbins’s choreography and the other for Oliver Smith’s scenic design. (“The Music Man” was best musical.)

COMFORTABLE UPBRINGING Mr. Prince was born Harold Smith Jr. in New York on Jan. 30, 1928, to Harold Sr. and Blanche (Stern) Smith. His parents divorced, and by the early 1930s his mother had remarried, to Milton Prince, a stockbroker. In a 1989 biography by Carol Ilson, “Harold Prince: A Direc- tor’s Journey,” Mr. Prince is quoted as saying that he had never liked his father and that they hadn’t seen each other much; even so, into the early part of his career he was known as Harold Smith Prince. Mr. Prince married Judy Chaplin, daughter of the composer and lyricist Saul Chaplin, in 1962. In addition to her, he is survived by a son, Charles Prince, an orchestra conductor; a daughter, Daisy Prince, a theater director; and three grandchildren. In autumn 1960, the Griffith-Prince production team had three Broadway

musicals running simultaneously: “Fio- rello!” “West Side Story” and “Tender- loin,” about an 1890s social reformer in a New York red light district, with music by Jerry Bock and lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, who also wrote “Fiorello!” But in June 1961, shortly after “Tenderloin” closed at a loss and a play they produced, “A Call on Kuprin,” shut down after just 12 performances, Mr. Griffith died, and Mr. Prince was on his own. His career as a solo producer began with a comedy, “Take Her, She’s Mine,” about the conventional parents of a pre- cocious young woman, written by Henry and Phoebe Ephron and based, at least in part, on their daughter Nora, the future writer and filmmaker. The show ran for more than a year, but Mr. Abbott was the director and Mr. Prince was still laboring in his shadow. His first attempt at directing, “A Family Affair,” a 1962 musical about squabbles over wedding plans, was short-lived. Then came “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” directed by Mr. Abbott, a show with big troubles on the road that Mr. Prince produced reluc- tantly but that was famously saved from oblivion by a new opening number written by Mr. Sondheim, “Comedy To- night.” “One quality Hal has is he refuses to accept defeat,” Mr. Sondheim said in the 2016 interview. “When we opened ‘Funny Thing’ in Washington and it got scathing reviews, we played to 50 people in a 1,200-seat auditorium. Almost any other producer would have closed it. Hal was willing to go ahead and take a chance on it. It wasn’t even that he loved the show that much, but once he was there, it was his baby, and he fought for it.”

Mr. Prince wore his dual hat for the first time in 1963, producing and directing “She Loves Me,” a frothy romantic comedy based on a Hungarian play that became a 1940 Hollywood film, “The Shop Around the Corner.” (Nora Ephron adapted it much later for her film “You’ve Got Mail,” making it a New York story.) “She Loves Me” didn’t make money, but critics praised it.

“FIDDLER” SETS A RECORD Mr. Prince’s next project was “Fiddler on the Roof,” based on stories by Sholom Aleichem. Produced by Mr. Prince, directed and choreographed by Mr. Rob- bins, with music by Mr. Bock and Mr. Harnick and a book by Joseph Stein, it won nine Tonys and ran for nearly eight years — more than 3,200 performances — the longest run in Broadway history at the time. Mr. Prince was given a Kennedy Cen- ter Honors award in 1994 and a National Medal of Arts in 2000. Perhaps the trib- ute he most coveted, however, nearly didn’t happen and ended in disappoint- ment. An elaborate musical retro- spective of his career, “Prince of Broad- way,” directed by Mr. Prince himself along with Ms. Stroman, was presented in Japan in 2015, but it struggled at first to find sufficient financing for a Broad- way opening. It took place at last in Au- gust 2017. Critics were cool to the production, which skated across the narrative of Mr. Prince’s career without offer- ing much introspection, and it closed in just over two months. It was his last Broadway production. It wasn’t Mr. Prince’s only brush with musical failure. But no failure was perhaps so poignant as “Merrily We Roll Along.” Written by Mr. Sondheim with a book by George Furth (who also wrote “Company”), “Merrily” is a show business story that rewinds the lives of its three main characters, from success and bitterness back to the innocence and aspirations of youth. It was criticized for, among other things, its un- pleasant tone and Mr. Prince’s decision to have youthful actors play the roles throughout, even at the start, when the characters are older. The storytelling problems were never adequately solved, and it closed after just 16 performances in 1981. Mr. Sond- heim and Mr. Prince never worked together on Broadway again, though more than 20 years later they collaborated on another troublesome musical — its vari- ous titles included “Wise Guys,” “Bounce” and “Road Show” — that never made it to Broadway. Mr. Sondheim denied that there had been a falling out. “The show was a failure,” he said. “We were both bitter about the experience, and there was a lot of Broadway bitch- ery, but the show failed because people didn’t like it.” Then he added: “If there’s a burning plane, I want Hal to be the pilot. He’s just great faced with difficulties, and he’s a terrific leader. I watched him after ‘Pa- cific Overtures’ had been massacred by critics. And he had to address the cast, give them courage, even though he was hurting just as much. “I thought, This is a captain!”

A rehearsal of “The Phantom of the Opera,” directed by Hal Prince, in Moscow in 2016. He also directed the musical in London and on Broadway, where it set a record for longevity.

VYACHESLAV PROKOFYEV/TASS, VIA GETTY IMAGES Zero Mostel and Maria Karnilova in a scene from “Fiddler on the Roof,” which Mr. Prince produced. It won nine Tonys and ran for nearly eight years.

GETTY IMAGES Dancers choreographed by Bob Fosse performed on Broadway in 1954 in “The Pajama Game.” The production brought Mr. Prince his first Tony, for best musical.

GJON MILI/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION, VIA GETTY IMAGES

Master of the Broadway musical

P RINCE, FROM PAGE 1

Michael Paulson contributed reporting.

Mr. Prince in his New York office in 1967, in front of a painting by Tom Morrow for “Cabaret,” one of the first so-called concept musicals.

ALLYN BAUM/THE NEW YORK TIMES

“He sees things visually first, and he knows what a show looks like in his head before he takes it on.”

Cardinal Jaime Lucas Ortega y Alamino, the former archbishop of Havana, who helped re-establish relations between Cuba and the United States and revive Roman Catholicism on the island, died on Friday in Havana. He was 82. His successor, Archbishop Juan de la Caridad García Rodríguez, announced the death. In June he had said that Car- dinal Ortega was in a weakened state because of terminal cancer. Cardinal Ortega retired in 2016, a decision that had long been expected because he was 79; the church requires bishops to submit their resignations when they turn 75. He, like many other bishops, was allowed to serve longer at the pope’s discretion. With his resignation, he left behind a

Cuban church whose reach was greater than at any point since Fidel Castro swept to power in 1959. Far from the days when Roman Catholics were mar- ginalized and the cardinal, as a young priest, spent time in a labor camp, the church was openly active, building new places of worship, tending to the poor and prodding the government to speed up economic reforms. Cardinal Ortega was the most power- ful figure in the Cuban church when, in 2014, he helped open a dialogue between Havana and the United States that led the two countries to resume diplomatic relations. Pope Francis brokered the deal, after Presidents Raúl Castro and Barack Obama had secretly turned to him for help. According to later reports, after the pope had entrusted Cardinal Ortega to deliver a letter to both presidents, he became a secret courier, delivering messages among the principals; in one in-

stance he made a clandestine trip to the White House. “I was the letter,” Mr. Orte- ga said later about his role, meaning that he had delivered some messages orally. “Perhaps the most important part of my mission came when President Raúl Castro asked me to convey a message to President Obama,” he said in a speech.

The message was that in Mr. Castro’s view, Mr. Obama had not been responsi- ble for American policy toward Cuba, that he was an honest man and that in Havana they knew he wanted to im- prove relations with the island. Mr. Obama thanked Mr. Castro for his words and sent the cardinal to deliver an oral response: “It was possible to im- prove the existing situation” despite their differences. On Dec. 17, 2014, Pope Francis’s 78th birthday, Cuba and the United States announced the restoration of diplomatic relations. Both sides acknowledged the work of the Catholic Church as mediator, although some in the Cuban exile com- munity and opponents of the Castro regime criticized Cardinal Ortega for not demanding improved human rights and freedoms as part of the negotiations, saying he had been too conciliatory toward the Cuban government. His supporters defended him as being astute and politically savvy in keeping

the church relevant through difficult years. During his more than three decades overseeing the Archdiocese of Ha- vana, Cardinal Ortega restored dozens of sanctuaries and established the head- quarters of the Catholic Bishops’ Con- ference of Cuba. In 2010, he inaugurated the new head- quarters for the San Carlos and San Am- brosio Seminary, the first building con- structed by the Catholic Church on the island since 1959. His achievements were noteworthy, considering that for much of his time the Cuban government was officially athe- ist and had banned believers of any faith from the Communist Party, and from the military and other professions. Before he retired, Cardinal Ortega greeted President Obama at the Cathe- dral de San Cristóbal de la Habana on the first day of the president’s visit to Cuba in March 2016. Mr. Obama was the first American president to visit Cuba in nearly 90 years.

The son of a sugar worker, Cardinal Ortega was born on Oct. 18, 1936, in the sugar mill town of Jagüey Grande in the central province of Matanzas. He began studying for the priesthood at San Al- berto Magno Seminary in Matanzas and completed his studies in Quebec. In 1966, Father Ortega was among those confined to a military labor camp where Castro sent religious leaders, ho- mosexuals and others who opposed his regime for “re-education.” After he was released, he became a parish priest in his hometown. He was named bishop for the western province of Pinar del Rio in 1978, and in 1981 Pope John Paul II named him archbishop of Havana. In 1991, Archbishop Ortega created Cáritas Havana, the first office of the Catholic relief charity in Cuba, which distributed medicine, food and other aid. Archbishop Ortega was named cardinal in 1994, only the second Cuban in church history to be so named.

JAIME LUCAS ORTEGA Y ALAMINO 1936-

BY KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

Cardinal Jaime Lucas Ortega y Alamino, the former archbishop of Havana, in 2003.

VINCENZO PINTO/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES

He helped restore Cuba-U.S. ties as secret courier for Vatican

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The New York Times International - 02.08.2019

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Master of the Broadway musical

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