After Hal Prince’s triumphant switch from producer to producer-director with She Loves Me, he and [Sondheim] decided to do a romantic musical, “something flowing and operetta-like”. They were first attracted to the idea of adapting L’Invitation au Chateau, a play by Jean Anouilh. The pair assumed that Anouilh would jump at the chance; they were surprised when Anouilh’s agent stated that he would only be interested if Leonard Bernstein wrote the music.

Not a patient man, Sondheim scrambled for other pieces to adapt. Two possibilities came through: Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game and Ingmar Bergman’s Smiles of a Summer Night, calling it a subtler story, one in which the apparent tragedy is comically averted, but the submerged one is not.

Prince and Wheeler (who had been brought onto the project early on) both agreed that Smiles of a Summer Night was the better piece to adapt. The trio wrote to Bergman for permission to adapt the piece; Bergman granted it with the understanding that they would not use the title of the film. Sondheim welcomed the restriction, already having a title of his own picked out: A Little Night Music.

“The original concept was that of a fantasy-ridden musical. It was to take place over a weekend during which, in almost game-like, fashion, Desiree would have been the prime mover and would work the characters into different situations… The way all this worked was that Madame Armfeldt, who was like a witch figure, would reshuffle the pack of cards and time would revert and we’d be back at the beginning of the weekend again…”

Sondheim’s original concept for A Little Night Music was of a dark, somewhat Chekhovian, yet romantic and erotic musical taking the form of a theme and variations. Wheeler’s book, however, did not support this; he was not a man of what-if’s and his work had always been linear and direct. Struggling to write the libretto that Sondheim had in mind, Wheeler took a trip to the West Indies per Prince’s advice. There, Wheeler wrote the show his way, without input from Sondheim.

Sondheim found the first draft of Wheeler’s book “boring and literal […] and a graceful, but fluffy light comedy version of Bergman’s film”. After receiving advice, Sondheim realized the project was more than “fluff” and that a score for it would allow him to show off.

A Little Night Music enjoyed 23 tryout performances at the Colonial Theatre in Boston before beginning previews at the Shubert Theatre on February 14, 1973. The production opened on February 25, 1973 before moving to the Majestic Theatre on September 18, 1973. The original Broadway production ran for 601 performances. The show proved to be more of a financial success than previous Sondheim-Prince collaborations.

The first international production opened at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Sydney, Australia in November 1973. A U.S. national tour launched the following year followed by a West End production in 1975. A Little Night Music was revived two more times before returning to Broadway in 2009 in a production starring Angela Lansbury and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Elaine Stritch and Bernadette Peters later replaced the aforementioned actors before the production closed in January 2011.

A Little Night Music has become a part of the repertoire of a few opera companies, specifically the Michigan Opera Theatre, the New York City Opera, the Houston Grand Opera, the Los Angeles Opera, and the Hartford Opera Theater.

A film adaptation was released in 1977 starring Elizabeth Taylor, moving the setting from Sweden to Austira. Hal Prince directed, marking his second time as a motion picture director.

Sondheim himself remarked that he never wanted the film made “because I didn’t think it would translate well onto the screen.” One sympathizes, “Although the original production shifted scenes from location to location with the ease of cinematic cuts, the true magic of A Little Night Music is it’s utterly theatrical storytelling: a Quintet who comment on the actions and motivations of the main characters; waltzes that take place in emotional landscapes rather than ballrooms; overlapping scenes that share the stage and thereby create ironies and patterns that make sense of a complex and layered drama.”

The Broadway production of A Little Night Music was nominated for 11 Tony Awards and was recognized with six: Best Musical, Best Actress (Glynis Johns), Best Featured Actress (Patricia Elliott), Best Costume Design (Florence Klotz), Best Book of a Musical (Hugh Wheeler), Best Original Score (Stephen Sondheim). Nominations included: Best Direction of a Musical (Harold Prince), Best Actor (Len Cariou).

The 1972-1973 Drama Desk Awards recognized Sondheim for Outstanding Music & Lyrics and Wheeler for Outstanding Book. The original cast album received a Grammy Award in 1973 and “Send in the Clowns” won the Grammy for Best Song of the Year in 1975 for Judy Collins’ recording. Despite the failure that the film adaptation was, it still was nominated for two Academy Awards, winning Best Score for orchestrator Jonathan Tunick who appeared in the film as the orchestra conductor in the opening scene.