Critical Reaction

Critical Reaction

"Furiously, fabulously, sensationally, it gave the Opera House, Manchester a premiere it will never forget. And it will be a long time before, I, too can shake off the spell of this titanic show."
– Daily Mirror

"It snaps, it crackles, it pops! It surges with a roar, its energy and sheer life undiminished by the years. I'm talking about Leonard Bernstein's music, mind you. If there were a Mount Rushmore for Broadway scores, West Side Story would be carved front and center. When the 'Prologue' blasts out of the pit, it sends an immediate thrill down the audience's collective spine."
– New York Post

"...Leonard Bernstein's score, a spine-tingling olio of jazz, Latin and classical textures and rapturous melodies that reveal as much about Tony and Maria's feelings as the wonder-struck lyrics provided by a very young Stephen Sondheim."
– USA Today

"West Side Story, with its matchless ability to weave a solemn narrative through music and dance, still dazzles after more than 50 years. ...Both a brilliant evocation of its period and a timeless tragedy of disharmony and hate."
– Variety

"Bernstein's score... [is] a ravishment of modernist dissonance and smashing schmaltz, as irresistible as Puccini."
– The New York Times