Harold Prince

Harold Smith Prince, known professionally as Hal Prince, was born on January 30, 1928, in Manhattan, New York, and died on July 31, 2019. Born into an affluent family of German Jewish descent, he was the son of Blanche (née Stern) and Harold Smith, and was later adopted by his stepfather, Milton A. Prince, a stockbroker. After graduating from the Franklin School, later renamed the Dwight School, in New York, Prince enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania, where he completed a liberal arts degree in three years at the age of 19. He subsequently served two years with the United States Army in post–World War II Germany before beginning his theatrical career.

Prince entered the theater as an assistant stage manager under producer and director George Abbott. His producing career gained early momentum when he co-produced The Pajama Game with Abbott, which won the 1955 Tony Award for Best Musical. Additional Tony Awards for producing followed with Damn Yankees (1956), Fiorello! (1960), and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1963), while Tony nominations came for West Side Story (1958) and New Girl in Town (1958). He received a Tony for producing Fiddler on the Roof in 1965 and nearly stepped away from musical theater before directing and producing Kander and Ebb's Cabaret in 1966, a Tony-winning success. A nomination followed for Kander and Ebb's Zorba in 1969.

The year 1970 marked the beginning of Prince's most significant creative partnership, with composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim, with whom he had previously collaborated on West Side Story. Their work together produced a series of landmark productions: Company (Tony Award, 1970), Follies (Tony Award, 1971), A Little Night Music (Tony Award, 1973), Pacific Overtures (Tony nomination, 1976), Side by Side by Sondheim (Tony nomination, 1977), and Sweeney Todd (Tony Award, 1979). The collaboration paused following Merrily We Roll Along in 1981, which ran for only 16 performances, and did not resume until Bounce in 2003.

During the same period, Prince received a Tony nomination for directing On the Twentieth Century (1978) and won Tony Awards for directing two Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals: Evita (1980) and The Phantom of the Opera (1988). Lloyd Webber had offered Prince the opportunity to direct Cats, which he declined. The Phantom of the Opera ultimately became the longest-running show in Broadway history. Between those productions, Prince directed A Doll's Life (1982), with lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, which continued the story of Nora Helmer beyond Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House; the production ran for five performances. His other commercially unsuccessful musicals included Grind (Tony nomination, 1985), which closed after 71 performances, and Roza (1987). Prince directed Kiss of the Spider Woman in 1993, which received the Tony Award for Best Musical, and earned a Tony Award for directing Show Boat in 1995, one of his verified credits alongside Children and Art, Sondheim: A Musical Tribute, and Wonderful Town. A Tony nomination followed for Parade in 1999.

In addition to musical theater, Prince directed operas including Josef Tal's Ashmedai, Carlisle Floyd's Willie Stark, Puccini's Madama Butterfly, a revival of Bernstein's Candide (Tony Award, 1974), and Turandot for the Vienna State Opera in 1983, conducted by Lorin Maazel and featuring José Carreras and Éva Marton.

Prince's career on Broadway spanned from 1953 to 2005. Over that time he accumulated a record 21 Tony Awards, comprising eight for direction, eight for producing the year's Best Musical, two as Best Producer of a Musical, and three Special Awards. In 1994 he became a Kennedy Center Honoree. In 2000 he received the National Medal of Arts, and in 2006 he was presented with a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre. Prince directed his last original Broadway musical, LoveMusik, in 2007, and on May 20 of that year delivered the commencement address at Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

Prince co-directed Paradise Found with Susan Stroman in 2010, a musical featuring the music of Johann Strauss II as adapted by Jonathan Tunick, with lyrics by Ellen Fitzhugh and a book by Richard Nelson based on Joseph Roth's novel The Tale of the 1002nd Night. The production premiered at the Menier Chocolate Factory in London on May 19, 2010, and starred Mandy Patinkin. Prince and Stroman later co-directed Prince of Broadway, a retrospective of his work first presented by Umeda Arts Theater in Tokyo in October 2015, with a book by David Thompson and additional material and orchestrations by Jason Robert Brown. The production opened in August 2017 at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre in New York with a cast that included Chuck Cooper, Janet Dacal, Bryonha Marie Parham, Emily Skinner, Brandon Uranowitz, Kaley Ann Voorhees, Michael Xavier, Tony Yazbeck, and Karen Ziemba.

Beyond his stage work, Prince served as a trustee of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and on the National Council of the Arts of the National Endowment for the Arts. At the request of Lotte Lenya, whom he cast in Cabaret, he also served on the Board of Trustees of the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music. The Harold Prince Theatre at the Annenberg Center of the University of Pennsylvania is named in his honor. A documentary, Harold Prince: The Director's Life, directed by Lonny Price, was broadcast on PBS Great Performances in November 2018. In 2019, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts presented an extensive exhibit honoring his life and work. Prince was born in New York, New York, where his career began and where much of his most enduring work was created.