LYNN AHRENS:  Nobody has a better season than you this year. Unbelievable, Sheldon.

SHELDON HARNICK:  Well, it started last summer, last fall with Rothschild & Sons off-Broadway, which was a wonderful remake of The Rothschilds. And then after She Loves Me opens [on Broadway], I have a one-act opera being performed at Texas State University. The man who runs the opera department there had performed in a one-act opera with music by Henry Mollicone and he loved it so he called Henry and said, “We will commission you to write an opera if you can come up with an idea about some celebrated Texas woman we could write an opera about.” He suggested Lady Bird [Johnson] and they bought it, so…

LYNN AHRENS:  That’s a great topic.

SHELDON HARNICK:  I knew almost nothing about her, so I began to read and what I discovered that she was a remarkable woman. It started as a full-length opera. We worked [on it] and I was about to write a synopsis [when] Henry called me and he said, “Forget it. The school doesn’t have the money. Stop working.” So I did. Then he called about three months later and he said, “Now they have the money but only for a one-act opera.” I said, “Fine we’ll call it Lady.” [They laugh.]

Her life was not a particularly dramatic life and when I read the one part that really was dramatic, it was good that it was reduced to a one-act opera because we didn’t have to stretch it. 

LYNN AHRENS:  That’s the key, isn’t it? When you’re doing something autobiographical, really try and find the drama and make a story out of it, as opposed to simply structuring it along the lines of: “then this happened and then that happened.”

SHELDON HARNICK:  Yes. 

LYNN AHRENS: I’m curious to know what attracted you to this form. I always make little murmurs about wanting to write an opera and Stephen Flaherty always says to me, “Oh Lynn you don’t really want to. If it was good, I would get all the credit and if it was bad you would get all the blame.”
[They laugh.]

SHELDON HARNICK:  I think he’s right. I’ve done several and until this opera with Henry Mollicone, I don’t believe I ever felt quite comfortable writing an opera.

LYNN AHRENS:  How was the process different? Are you writing and then sending him scenes?

SHELDON HARNICK:  Well you really have to be more like a playwright because you’re writing a play. More and more operas are being done like plays and it’s up to the composer to find some kind of compositional technique to give the music structure.

LYNN AHRENS:  And will you have the time to do any rewrites or will they simply teach it, rehearse it and figure it out on the fly?

SHELDON HARNICK:  Oh, that’s a good question. We went out for a workshop a couple of months ago and the students in the Opera Department had beautiful voices. What we saw and what we heard sounded like we had done our job right. I don’t think we’ll need to do any rewriting. If it comes out that it’s too long or that there are passages that have to be extended or shrunk a bit I, we might do that but I think that it’s right as is.

LYNN AHRENS:  Aha, that’s really great. I’ve always heard that in the opera world, the process is geared to the classic repertory—the singers come in knowing their material, the rehearsal happens, there may be gaps in the schedule to accommodate other performances—my impression is that unlike musicals, there’s very little time for the librettist to rewrite. I’m glad you’re feeling good about it. I would be in a panic if I thought I didn’t have time for rewrites. I think Ladybird Johnson is a fantastic subject.

So that’s just one of the many things in this season that you’re up to. I have so many questions to ask about every one of the shows.

SHELDON HARNICK:  I didn’t expect to have to do any work on Fiddler or She Loves Me but we ran into an odd problem with She Loves Me. There’s a scene where our hero gets fired and the clerks in the shop where he works they sing to him “Goodbye, Georg.”

LYNN AHRENS:  Right.

SHELDON HARNICK:  This is done in counterpart to the shoppers who are listing all the things they want to buy. The way it was written, the shoppers start singing and they only get about two or three lines out before the clerks begin to sing “Goodbye, Georg.” But the way Scott Ellis has staged it, the shoppers sing about eight lines in the clear before the clerks sing. He had them repeating the same words I would like to buy a cake of castile soap, etc., over and over. So 50 years after writing She Loves Me, I had to start writing new lines.

LYNN AHRENS: It never ends!

SHELDON HARNICK:  It was difficult because I had exhausted almost everything you’d find in a beauty shop. So I went and I looked at my wife’s beauty table and I said, “What can I do that I haven’t done before?” And then I thought, “It’s wintertime and they might be suffering from chapped lips or windburn. That’s it. I’ll do something about windburn.”

LYNN AHRENS:  Windburn is very universal. Isn’t it fascinating the way shows keep morphing and changing and you’re never done. It’s like New York. Something always needs updating.
Let’s talk about Fiddler, Sheldon, What a beautiful revival! It was the first Broadway show I ever saw… 

SHELDON HARNICK:  You told me, yes.

LYNN AHRENS:  Actually, the first musical I ever saw on a stage. I’d seen a movie musical or two, and heard some show records, but I’d never seen a live musical. It was revelatory for me. I had never realized that songs could carry story or articulate character—all the things Fiddler does so brilliantly. In this production, the beginning and end are also reconceived.  

SHELDON HARNICK:  Yeah.

LYNN AHRENS:  How was that for you? Did you have to approve it?

SHELDON HARNICK:  Well, when we first went to our director Bart Sher, he said, “After 50 years I worry that the show may be missing something, especially to connect to young people. He came up with this framing device that I feel is unnecessary. But there are a lot of people who find it very moving. So we left it in. As a matter of fact, last night at She Loves Me, a man introduced himself to me and told how moved he was by that addition to the show. I’ve asked the cast of Fiddler, “What do your friends or your guests think about it?” And they have all said, “It’s very mixed. Half of them love it, half of them are confused by it.” Anyway, we left it in.

LYNN AHRENS:  Every time I see Fiddler I burst into tears on the downbeat. I find it one of the most beautiful, moving, gloriously constructed and written shows ever. And I was taken aback when I saw the changes. I was confused at the beginning, but I was moved at the end because of course it resonates so powerfully with what’s going on now, in our country and in the world. The whole discussion about immigration …

SHELDON HARNICK:  Well that’s always been the case.

LYNN AHRENS:  Of course, but seeing the show, I was struck by how relevant it continues to be, and how the new ending works to bring it home. 

SHELDON HARNICK:  When I talk about Fiddler, I realize more and more that Jerome Robbins never got enough credit. This show is what it is because of him. When he became our director, we had a wonderful, active opening number called “We’ve Never Missed a Sabbath Yet” and he loved it. It was the mother and the five daughters getting ready for the Sabbath. But we began to have meetings with Robbins and each meeting began with a question you will be very familiar with: “What is this show about?”

LYNN AHRENS:  I think you’ve asked me that question. [They laugh]

SHELDON HARNICK:  We would say, “Well, it’s about this dairy man with his marriageable daughters,” and Robbins would say, “No, that’s the plot. That’s not what gives this show its power, its strength. What is that?” And after weeks of meetings, one of us said, “Do you know what this show is really about? It’s about the changing of life in this village. Enlightenment is making its way from West Europe into East Europe and things are changing.” And Robbins immediately saw that that was the answer and he said, “Okay. In that case, Sheldon, you and Jerry have to write a song that tells the audience what some of these traditions are they’re going to see change or remain the same.” And that led to the opening number, “Tradition,” which was quite different from anything we had ever conceived. And then what Robbins tried to do—I don’t know that he was entirely successful at it or if he could be—was to make every scene in one way or another reflect either a change of tradition or the preservation of tradition. But that’s what he attempted to do. And his advice was...with Robbins, I shouldn’t use the word advice. It was always a demand.

LYNN AHRENS:  So I’ve heard. [Laughs.]

SHELDON HARNICK:  Like “Cut this number.” “But we love that number and it works!” He’d say, “I know it works, but cut it. We’re going to replace it with something better.”

LYNN AHRENS:  Wow. Nothing like pressure.

SHELDON HARNICK:  He was just extraordinary and he had done remarkable research. As a matter of fact, when we invited him to be our director, he told us a fascinating story, which I think underlay everything he did with the show. He said when he was six years old his family had gone back to Poland to the shtetl where their ancestors came from and he said he always remembered that as a very emotional experience even at the age of six. Then in World War II when he read that the Nazis were destroying the shtetls, he was horrified cause he thought they had probably destroyed the one he had visited. And when we invited him to be our director he said, “I can put that shtetl culture back on stage. I can give it an additional life. I can bring it back to life for another twenty-five years.”

LYNN AHRENS:  That is so moving. The opening number of Fiddler is worth the price of admission—and seeing it again, it just unfolds and unfolds like a flower.

SHELDON HARNICK:  I don’t know about you but, unfortunately, I have not had the privilege of watching my directors work. Usually, I haven’t done the score right the first time around, so when everybody’s rehearsing, I’m back in my apartment or in some hotel room rewriting. But I did get to see Jerome Robbins stage Tradition and it really was like watching a superb sculptor work. Instead of marble he had actors and musicians. Every once in a while he would turn to Joe Stein and say, “Joe give me a line here.” He would turn to the woman who was writing the incidental music, “I need four bars here.” And in two hours he had created that extraordinary number. He was remarkable.

LYNN AHRENS:  Indeed. Have you been going to the rehearsals of the shows this season?

SHELDON HARNICK:  My presence was really not necessary with either Fiddler or She Loves Me. I had a superb director and a superb choreographer in each case. I did drop in from time to time. I wanted to meet the cast and also, as you know, there are things about the songs that could be misinterpreted or misunderstood. So, I was able to help occasionally. Sometimes the advice I would give would be as simple as, “Don’t hold that note that long.” I did try and involve myself, but it was on a very modest basis.

LYNN AHRENS:  I wanted to ask you about writing She Loves Me. I read that you never were in the room together with your book writer. Is that right? 

SHELDON HARNICK:  Oh I think that’s true. Our book writer, Joe Masteroff, did a remarkable thing. The show is based on the film The Shop Around The Corner. I had a copy of the film and also the script of the film. I kept referring to it to remind myself of the characters and the plot. Joe didn’t. We all saw the film together once and then he went off by himself and wrote the book. He gave us scenes as he wrote them. And because Joe has a wonderful musical sensibility, almost every scene had a spot for a song that was just unmistakable. You read the scene, you thought…

LYNN AHRENS:  There’s the song. I know that feeling.

SHELDON HARNICK:  “I know where the song goes.” So we didn’t have to be in the room with him for rewrites. It was remarkable.

LYNN AHRENS:  Well, what a season for you here, there, and everywhere. You also had It’s A Wonderful Life.

SHELDON HARNICK:  That was yes, a wonderful production at Goodspeed.

LYNN AHRENS:  All in the same time frame, which is quite extraordinary.

SHELDON HARNICK:  Yes, it was extraordinary. In April, I will be celebrating my 92nd birthday and I thought this is a wonderful time for this to have happened.

LYNN AHRENS:  It’s perfect. What better time and what better gift. An ongoing birthday gift—the revivals just keep coming! And the new opera and you’ve recorded Dragons, right?

SHELDON HARNICK:  I did a demo record. Dragons is something that I’ve been working on for maybe 40 or 50 years. Many years ago my wife and I saw a play called The Dragon written by a Soviet playwright. A couple of years later I wanted to do a musical but had no ideas and then I remembered The Dragon. I went to the Drama Book Shop and, sure enough, they had a copy of the play in the translation that had been used in the production I saw. When I read the introduction to the play, I realized why the second act was so confusing. The playwright, Evgeny Schwartz, had lived through the siege of Leningrad, which was harrowing. And when peace came, he thought to himself, “After all the suffering we’ve done, why must we continue to suffer under Stalin?” So he wrote an anti-Stalinist play. But he knew that if he [did] it could never be produced. So he wrote it as a very oblique fairy tale.

LYNN AHRENS:  Smart.

SHELDON HARNICK:  When it was [originally] produced, the Russian audience knew, of course, what the play was about and, consequently, it was withdrawn after one performance. My problem was that although the first act was very clear, American audiences wouldn’t understand the second act. But I went ahead with it any way. I couldn’t get anybody to do the book. Everybody who read the play said, “There’s something about the second act I don’t understand. Why don’t you do it yourself?” So I wound up doing the book and because I’m not a playwright, that’s why it’s taken so long. I had to create a new second act that meant something to American audiences. I had about six college productions and kept getting closer. The first act always worked beautifully but I couldn’t find a satisfying ending for act two. About ten years ago I thought, “Oh, to hell with it!” and I abandoned it. And then last year, Jim Morgan at the York Theater said, “Sheldon, I want to do five weekends of your shows. One of them will be a review of your songs. The other four, I want do shows of yours that no one knows.” So I looked at Dragons and I thought, “Well, let me try it.” I got Maggie Harrer to direct it. As you know, a good director will ask you questions that are very difficult to answer. Maggie kept asking me those questions. I kept finding the answers. And through that, I found an effective ending for the show.

LYNN AHRENS:  A good director can clarify so much.

SHELDON HARNICK:  And we did and I thought “Oh my God, it works, after all these years.” So I just finished making a demo record and now I’m gonna try and see if I can find a producer for it.

LYNN AHRENS:  I’m happy to hear that. I remember we had a conversation, this was a long time ago, probably in the midst of your travails with this very show. I told you a story about how we once received a letter of rejection on the opening night of the same show in New York. It took them two years to get back to us with a rejection, and in the interim the show was being produced. And I remember during that conversation you said something like, “Yeah, I sent a letter out for Dragons and they never even got back to me. And you know—I have made a certain contribution to the American musical theater.” [Laughter.] We can talk about longevity—the longevity of your shows and your own longevity—a long ride on these waves of failure and success and rejection and acceptance. How do you feel about all that? Is there something that keeps you going in the face of rejection? Is there something that keeps you working on the same show for 50 years?  

SHELDON HARNICK:  The last show I had on Broadway, Rex, was a failure and I was very depressed. It may be a gift from my parents’ genes but failure begins to fade after a few weeks. And also I have other interests in life. I love music, I love the theatre, I love food, I love a lot of things—so I know that in time I will want to go back to work on something else and that I have to get over failure. But, as I say, that’s a gift. I suddenly remember years ago, I met a young writer. We became friends. He was desperate to have a musical put on and finally his musical was put on and it failed. And he killed himself. And I thought, “There are people, apparently, who are so fragile that they can’t bear failure” I feel lucky that I’ve known failure. We all have. I get over it. I get past it.

LYNN AHRENS:  What do you think about changing times on Broadway? When it first opened, She Loves Me got rave reviews and didn’t run all that long. Now it’s considered a gem. It’s used in musical theater workshops sometimes as an example of a perfect show that young writers should have a look at and study. 

SHELDON HARNICK:  I remember that the year She Loves Me opened, Hello, Dolly! And Funny Girl were part of the season. The headline in Time Magazine review called us “The Quiet One.” When I read the reviews I thought, “Good. We’re here for two years or so.” And then after about six months, business began to fall off, which we couldn’t figure out. And it just kept falling off and we died after about eight and a half months. We were heartsick. For about a year there were no productions. Then the first production was at Bucks County and to our surprise, Jerry Bock, Joe Mastroff, and I got a letter from the company saying, “We don’t know why this didn’t work on Broadway but our audiences love it.” And then some months later there was another production and we got another letter and that became the norm. Then what projected the show into the mainstream was the [1993] Roundabout production with Scott Ellis [directing]. It got love letters from the critics and the following year we had 60 productions! Suddenly the show had entered the mainstream of shows that get done. 

LYNN AHRENS: I think it’s exquisite. It’s like an elegant little clockwork piece. Everything fits and is so precise and so perfectly synchronous in tone.

In recent seasons, we’ve embraced shows that are in some way self-referential, you know, Book of Mormon, Something Rotten…And then of course there’s Hamilton this season, moving us in yet another direction. And it’s interesting to think of She Loves Me in their company this season, having survived so many ebbs and flows of taste.

SHELDON HARNICK:  The season we [originally] opened, I think people were used to the bigger musicals and they didn’t quite know what to make of something that was like a play with music, almost. I hope that that’s changed.

I think one of the things that’s changed...is what set designers can accomplish. What can happen not only in musicals but in straight plays, scenically, is extraordinary these days. In [this revival of] She Loves Me, the fact that our set designer is also an architect is very apparent onstage. What he’s done is architectural and it combines his sense of artistry and his sense of architecture and it’s extraordinary.

LYNN AHRENS: I can’t wait to see it. 

SHELDON HARNICK:  It’s a beautiful production. I worry that my writing style was developed in the 50s and when I see something like Hamilton and I see how comfortable Lin-Manuel Miranda is with rap and with contemporary forms of popular music, I know I don’t do that. And if I were to attempt it, there’s every chance that it would come off as fake rather than authentic. But then I’ll see a revival of a show like South Pacific and I’ll think, “Well, now here’s a show from decades ago and it works. The music is what it is, it’s good music in its own style.” That’s very comforting to me because it means if what you write is good, audiences will buy it. You don’t have to feel that you have to be up to the minute and write rap or whatever is currently the popular style. If it’s good, it’s good and audiences will accept it.

LYNN AHRENS:  I think that’s totally true. Graciela Daniele said to me, “Don’t worry about Broadway, don’t worry about off-Broadway, don’t worry about where it’s going to end up or what’s going to happen. If it’s good it will have a life.” And I think that’s true, certainly for your shows.

SHELDON HARNICK:  I have to believe that.

LYNN AHRENS:  Yeah. No need to start writing rap, Sheldon. [They laugh.]

SHELDON HARNICK:  As a matter of fact, Lin-Manuel gave me a book that has about 700 pages of rap lyrics. I read it and about 90% of it just went right by me. Song after song said, “I’m a great guy! I’m the best!” But about 10% of what I read affected me. It was good poetry. There are some very talented writers out there and I thought, “You can’t dismiss this when there are writers of this quality.”

LYNN AHRENS:  I find if I just listen to a music track and it’s a good rhythm, I immediately start writing a song over it. In fact I do it to songs on the radio all the time. I just ignore the lyrics and I make up my own song to it. Couldn’t you write a song like that? I bet you would start doing a rap.

SHELDON HARNICK:  No. I think I would dance. [Laughter.] I don’t know. I’ve never done that. I can’t picture being given that kind of track. I guess that’s the reason that I don’t write popular songs. I have to have a story. There was a time when I first came to New York when I set myself a schedule. I thought, “Every week I think I have to have written a song or a couple of songs.” And I set out to write them. If they weren’t very good, at least they were an exercise in craft. But when I have a story then I can’t wait to try and write something for the characters.

LYNN AHRENS:  Do you like to write to music? Or would you rather do lyrics first? I can’t believe I’ve just asked this tiresome old question, but in fact, I’m curious to know!

SHELDON HARNICK:  I guess the answer to that is I like both ways. When I worked with Jerry Bock, we had ah a unique way of working, at least I don’t know any other writers who worked this way. Once we knew what the source was we would go into our respective studios and begin to work. Jerry would write a musical number and we he got it to the point where he thought, “Okay, that’s done,” he would record it. And then eventually he would send me a tape with anywhere from eight to a dozen or more numbers on it and each one would start with “Sheldon, I think this one is for Amalia. Or this one might be for Georg.” The most exciting ones on the tape were the ones that began, “I don’t know what the hell this is, but I like it.” Jerry was extraordinarily generous because, as I say, there might be fifteen songs on the tape and only two of them might coincide with ideas that I had or that I would respond to. So we always started with my writing lyrics to music. Then eventually, I would have an idea for a song where I thought, “I don’t want to be constrained by the music, especially if I think there’s going to be three choruses and I have to carpenter each chorus to find what the ultimate meter is going to be.” The first time I gave a lyric to Jerry, I was wondering: is he as good at setting a lyric as he is at writing music first? It turned out he was wonderful at it. Not only that—because Jerry had started as a lyricist as well as a composer—he was a wonderful editor. Many of his suggestions as to cuts or changes or development were wonderfully useful. So I enjoy working both ways. In a way I think it’s easier when you have the music because, as you know, music will sometimes suggest a lyric that you might not have thought of. 

LYNN AHRENS:  Marilyn Bergman always says the words are on the tips of the notes. [They laugh] I love that.

SHELDON HARNICK:  I can talk about the future. I’m going to be 92. I have an idea for a musical, but I won’t go into it because you’ll steal it. [Laughs.] Seriously, there is a subject I’m very interested in and I hope I live long enough to finish it. However, in the immediate future I do have these old shows I’ve revised. One of them was a show done in 1960 off-Broadway. It was called Smiling The Boy Fell Dead and it was unsuccessful. I’ve revised it. The book writer and the composer have long since passed away so I’ve revised it myself. And, as I said, I’m going to try and find a producer for Dragons. And there are one or two others that I’ll try to get produced. And then there’s Rex, which Sherman Yellen and I have thoroughly revised. In fact, we may have a production of Rex this summer. And I do have that idea for a new show. I hope I live long enough to work on it, because the idea of exploring your own mind and your own emotions, working with what God has given you is so exciting. To create something and look at it and say, “Oooh, that’s good.” I don’t think there’s anything more satisfying than that.

LYNN AHRENS:  There’s nothing more thrilling is there?

SHELDON HARNICK:  The only thing that’s equally satisfying is having an audience respond to what you’ve written as you hope they will. With She Loves Me we have a phenomenon, I’ve never had with a show. As I left the stage door last night, there was a long line of people waiting for our three stars, who’ve all done television. I’ve never had that.

LYNN AHRENS: I just don’t want to stop talking to you! I read a lovely quote by Sherman Yellen about the original fellows who played the brothers in the Rothschilds. That they formed a little family and have remained friends to this day. I guess what I wanted to say is that I hope you know what a family you have, what you are a part of, what you have created in the theatre. I see you at the Dramatist’s Guild meetings, you mentored me when I was just starting out, I see you at every opening night, at every Tony event, at the Rodgers Award meetings. You’ve given us all such beautiful theatre, and you continue to write and take part. I hope you know that you’re an integral part of the history of theater, and the family of writers. Do you feel that?

SHELDON HARNICK:  Well, I’d like to think that that’s true and I’m glad that you said it out loud. It makes it more real.

LYNN AHRENS:  What would we do without you? You know it’s…um…it’s really so moving to me to feel…I’ve known you for all of these years and you’ve given me so much not only by way of inspiration but in actual, practical, advice.

SHELDON HARNICK:  Thank you. It’s lovely to talk with somebody who knows what you’re doing. Somebody who works with the same feeling.

LYNN AHRENS: Thank you Sheldon.