Harold Prince

Make a list of the landmarks of the American musical theater over the last half a century -- West Side Story, Fiddler on the Roof, Cabaret, Sweeney Todd, The Phantom of the Opera -- and you'll find Harold Prince behind every one of them. He has won 21 Tony Awards as producer and director, a record no one can touch. Prince began his producing career at age 26, enjoying back-to-back hits with The Pajama Game and Damn Yankees. The first show also marked the beginning of his collaboration with director and choreographer Jerome Robbins. The pair made history in 1957 with West Side Story, a retelling of the Romeo and Juliet story set among rival New York street gangs, with a classic score by composer Leonard Bernstein and lyricist Stephen Sondheim. The collaboration of Prince and Robbins reached its peak with Fiddler on the Roof, the timeless story of a Jewish family in pre-revolutionary Russia, coping with the conflicting pull of tradition and modernity. Prince's attention turned to directing, and in 1967 he scored a hit with Cabaret, a dark-hued tale of Berlin night life on the eve of the Nazi takeover. In the 1970s, he enjoyed a memorable collaboration with Stephen Sondheim, creating some of the most sophisticated works in the history of the musical stage: Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, and their biggest hit, Sweeney Todd. Prince enjoyed even greater success with two lavish musicals by Andrew Lloyd Webber, Evita and The Phantom of the Opera. Audiences around the world were thrilled by Phantom's breathtaking stagecraft and went back to see it again and again. Over the years, Harold Prince has diversified, directing dramas, films and opera, but the musical theater remains his greatest love. Now in the sixth decade of his career, he is still going strong.