SINGAPORE - Stephen Sondheim, the composer-lyricist who transformed the American musical, died on Friday (Nov 26) aged 91.

Sondheim, whose eight lifetime Tony Awards surpassed the total of any other composer, was renowned for his wit and wordplay as well as his complex, versatile compositions, which were often incredibly difficult to sing.

Here are seven of his best musicals.

1. West Side Story (1957)

Sondheim made his Broadway debut as the lyricist for this musical, which transposed Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet to the Upper West Side of New York City, as two star-crossed teenagers are caught between rival street gangs.

Several of the songs, set to music by Leonard Bernstein, became Broadway classics, from the love duet Tonight to the rambunctious America, sung by Puerto Rican immigrants.

A 1961 film adaptation won 10 Academy Awards, the most for any musical film, while another directed by Steven Spielberg will be out next month.

2. Gypsy (1959)

Based on the memoirs of the striptease artiste Gypsy Rose Lee, this musical honed the archetype of the stage mother in Rose, a domineering matron who pushes her daughters into show business but becomes ultimately estranged from them.

Sondheim wrote the lyrics to music by Jule Styne, and the songs here include the cheeky You Gotta Get a Gimmick and the showstopper Rose's Turn.

3. Company (1970)

Company revolves around a single man, Robert, whose friends are all married or engaged couples. In a series of vignettes linked by his 35th birthday, his friends try to find him a girlfriend even as they themselves struggle with their relationships.

The musical is especially known for the song Being Alive, in which Robert realises that "alone is alone, not alive". In the Oscar-nominated divorce film Marriage Story (2019), the male protagonist, played by Adam Driver, sings the entire song in a piano bar.

A Broadway revival of Company was slated to open on Sondheim's 90th birthday on last year, but was suspended due to the Covid-19 pandemic. It will now open next month. Sondheim attended a Nov 15 preview before his death.

4. A Little Night Music (1973)

Inspired by the 1955 Ingmar Bergman film Smiles Of A Summer Night, this musical about fraught romance in 1900 Sweden plays with dance time signatures, featuring the waltz, the sarabande, the mazurka and more.

It contains one of Sondheim's loveliest songs, Send In The Clowns, a plaintive, wry lament about missed opportunities.

5. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street (1979)

In this macabre masterpiece, a vengeful barber in Victorian London collaborates with his amoral landlady to turn his customers into meat pies, even as he pursues vengeance against the judge who robbed him of his wife and daughter years ago.

Amid the bloody plot and shrieking score, Sondheim's gift for wordplay sizzles in darkly funny songs like the pun-stuffed A Little Priest, in which pie flavours include "shepherd's pie peppered with actual shepherd on top" and "actor", which "always arrives overdone".

Actor Johnny Depp played the demon barber in a 2007 Tim Burton film alongside Helena Bonham Carter.

6. Sunday In The Park With George (1984)

Sondheim and his collaborator James Lapine won the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for this innovative musical about the French pointillist painter Georges Seurat and his painting, A Sunday Afternoon On The Island Of La Grande Jatte.

The songs also chart the relationship between George and his long-time mistress Dot, who models for him but grows dissatisfied with his inattention.

7. Into The Woods (1987)

This dark, beguiling musical subverts Brothers Grimm fairy tales such as Cinderella, Rapunzel, Jack and the Beanstalk and Little Red Riding Hood. Disaffected princesses, impulsive children and a so-called wicked witch wander the woods, their stories intertwining with that of a childless baker and his wife.

A star-studded Disney film adaptation, featuring Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, Anna Kendrick, Chris Pine and more, was released in 2014.