"A Little Night Music" is exquisite to look at; it has a wonderful score; its lyrics are a model of the craft; I saw it twice, liked it better the second time, and find that what it is trying to do is more interesting than what it did, for the show has little life, little musical theatricality and little reason for its own existence. Coming as it does after their adventurous and inspired "Company" and "Follies," the new Stephen Sondheim-Harold Prince musical … is a deep disappointment for me. This enormously talented team, composer-lyricist and producer-director, has been solitarily evolving the Broadway musical theater. Though a show of theirs that does not work is still beyond the talent and imagination of most everyone else who does musicals, it is depressing to find them stepping backwards and the main problem, I think, was a conceit.

The conceit was to create a musical of classical elegance, beginning with a title that represents sheer chutzpah drawn, as it is, from no less than Mozart ("Eine Kleine Nachtmusik"). The story they chose was Ingmar Bergman's charming stylish movie of sexual-romantic revolving doors, "Smiles of a Summer Night."…

Nevertheless, Mr. Sondheim's score is enchanting, without question his finest yet, a true progress and development for him as a composer. His melodies are strong and lyrical; his harmonies, as usual, are disarmingly grateful to Ravel; his dissonances are refreshing and effective; his varied applications of three-four time keep the songs interesting and different; the structures are nearly all of inventive length and style; his music is always singable and theatrical, doubtless due to a familiarity with the operas of Janacek….

Sondheim is also the only lyricist, probably, who could have done such a score justice, and though one could quibble with a word choice here or a syllable accent there, it would be ridiculous in the face of his formidable craftsmanship, invention and poetry.