Forced to bend her soul to a sordid role
Pint-sized Broadway dynamo Kristen Chenoweth will make her fully-staged role debut as Cunegonde in Candide at the English National Opera this summer. The Bernstein/Wilbur, Latouche, Parker, Hellman, Sondheim, Bernstein & Wheeler operetta will be performed in the Robert Carsen production previously seen at the Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris and La Scala, Milan. Performances begin June 23 for a 13-performance run.According to The Stage, "popular tenor" Toby Spence will take on the title role, with other casting TBA. By an odd coincidence, the ENO are presenting a concert only a few weeks prior to this Candide starring a diva some might consider "dream casting" as The Old Lady. La Cieca supposes we should just dream on!
And will someone please wake La Cieca when the New York City Opera gets around to announcing the casting for their revival of the creaky Harold Prince staging of Candide?
Labels: crossover, diva, nyco, world leaders dancing in underwear
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59 Comments:
those titties are anything but pint-sized. alright!
I'm sure why there needs to be yet another revival of Candide with some many other less well known shows that could use another looksee. NYCO used to do some great musicals; their Little Night Music is still one of my fave PBS broadcasts. Rather than Candide, I'd like to see them (or anyone, for that matter) revive Chess. I know it flopped on Broadway. I know it was butchered when it was rewritten for the transfer from London. However, it has two terrific tenor roles, am excellent quartet, and the songs Judy Kuhn sang, including the one written specifically for her, "Someone Else's Story", are terrific. If someone could get the book back in shape, it could be great. Oh, and the music is by those guys from ABBA, Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus.
Who would have guessed when West Side Story debuted, that fifty years there would be so many more stagings and recordings of Candide?
Could I begin to list how many other Broadway shows I'd rather see revived in opera houses than what gets out there? How about, instead of Mahagonny, a staging of Love Life or even The Firebrand of Florence?
Three cheers that Sunday In The Park is being revived ... so what about A Little Night Music?
Greenwillow? New Girl In Town? Fiorello?
max zook: not sure if your travel plans ever take you toward chicago, but if you'd like to see fiorello, it's being revived at timeline theatre after a very successful production last spring. i'll say up front that i am the musical director, so i'm partial, but sheldon harnick loved the production, including some of the things we did to freshen it up. he's been trying hard for a long time to get it back to broadway, including many attempts with jason alexander, but the timing has never been right. you're right: it's a terrific piece.
i love chess, sanford, but it's NOT a piece for opera singers, or even opera musicians. NYCO would really struggle with the piece. i'd rather they do a piece like destry rides again or YES greenwillow that has some orchestral oomph to it and can be done by classical / operetta singers more successfully. they've been smart in staying closer to the kismet, sweeney, most happy fella sort of shows. here's a crazy idea, because so many hated the show: titanic. also, secret garden. any news on ragtime, by the way?
I knew Chess was wrong for NYCO but I'm so damn in love with the score. I had to order the CD through Ebay because it's out of print. And I got it from a European seller, no less. I adore it.
I loved Titanic. I thought I was going to hate it, because I don't generally like shows that are more about the stage machinery, rather than the book and score (Miss Saigon's helicopter rescue was done much better on China Beach), but I loved it. Maury Yeston may not have written a score that produced any great individual numbers, as he did for Nine (Banderas and Sophia Loren in the movie... if te Writers Strike ever ends), but it's a beautiful score. Victor Garber and Michael Cerveris were both terrific.
I also wish that someone would revive Lady In The Dark (not at NYCO); I always thought that Meryl Streep or Bette Midler would have been, and still maybe could be, great in it. Or Christine Andreas/Rebecca Luker. Or best of all, maybe, Christine Ebersole.
How about One Touch Of Venus? Maybe Guleghina could do it. Totally not serious about Guleghina doing it.
Now, the agony has been taken off me and I can breath better! Finally, Ms. W. will be making her debut at an opera house. It's just about time to "musicalize" opera and whatever was left of it.
I meant to say Ms. C., and not Ms. W.
Ebersole already did Lady in the Dark. I wasn't there, but it was supposedly a triumph. What a great, great work. Have you heard Kabaivanksa do it? Strange and glorious.
Ebersole did it with Encore! in '94 before I moved back to NYC. I wish I had seen that. I love that show and the movie with Ginger Rogers. And Kabaivanska's is available on DVD, but I haven't heard it. How about a revival of Knickerbocker Holiday? I'm for about any show, as long as it doesn't have Nathan Lane, the biggest ham since Zero Mostel. I hate going to shows alone, though, and sad to say, I've never been to either NYCO or the Met. We show get a group together. I would enjoy that. None of my friends like opera. I'd also like to see "Do I Hear A Waltz"; it has one of my favorite Stephen Sondheim lyrics in it. "Sometimes she drinks in bed, sometimes he's homosexual..."
Candide completists should check out the 1999 Royal National Theatre performance to hear how the work sounds when presented squarely as musical theatre without a whiff of operetta- very interesting. Alex Kelly is an actress, not a singer, so in terms of voice she yields to the Andersons and Dessays (even the Cooks and Chenoweths, tbh) with some quite whistling high notes- but it's still the best 'Glitter and be Gay' I've ever heard. And the rest of the cast isn't too shabby, either- Daniel Evans, Simon Russell Beale, Denis Quilley, Beverley Klein. 'Make Our Garden Grow' is incredibly moving- more so, interestingly, than with the huge massed ranks of choir and band in Lenny's own recording.
Sanford -
I agree with you about Nathan Lane. I am seeing him in November on 9 January. Thank goodness that due to my job I get to see most things on Broadway gratis. But I was talking to Mamet about it and he seems to be happy with his performance, but then again why would he say bad things about his show.
Now if I could just get free opera tickets - or at least find a way to write them off on my taxes.
It may be quixotic of me, but I've always wished they'd get Dame Joan to sing the Old Lady. I know the accent would KILL. But I'd settle for Martina Arroyo or Elena Obrastzova. It's like the Old Countess: no diva has truly quit until she's sung it. (Grace Slick anyone?)(In Pique Dame I mean.)
Christine Ebersole was indeed lovely in Lady in the Dark, but the show is a bit dated for a Broadway run. The book of One Touch of Venus (I also saw that at Encores) needs a lot of work by a sensitive author -- haha, you can imagine a sensitive updater of a Broadway book, can't you? (In your dreams.) (Well, perhaps a certain Mr. Jorden, whose Fledermaus is the only one that ever made me laugh.)
Fiorello is a delight whatever you do with it, Doug, but it's only fair to say that Sheldon will always love it (or She Loves Me, or even that godawful Tenderloin) whatever you do with it. (He'll be even more ecstatic if you revive Rex, but DON'T. It's not good.) I'd like to see Love Life (having heard half a dozen of the songs) but have no hopes it would actually come together on stage. The Golden Apple or Valmouth, perhaps, but style is even more important in those cases.
A few good songs do not a revivable show make. Or Follies would be sure-fire, eh? Instead of an almost guaranteed flop.
Kismet should be sent on a road-show tour of the Middle East. That would convince the Arabs that Americans really do respect and admire their culture. Peace and joy would spread throughout. And I'm not even a neo-con. (But you need a solid, Sondheim-y tenor for the caliph, and a REAL Broadway baritone for Hajji.) (And shoot Lonny Price if he comes anywhere near the production.)
Actually the best show on Broadway just now (and the most fabulous production -- saw it again last night from center balcony) is War & Peace. A bit long for Broadway union rules though.
Actually Vera Galupe-Borzkh would be the ideal Old Lady. Or Old Countess. And her father DID come from Rovno Gobernya.
some interesting stuff on "I am so easily assimilated from UCLA...
http://www.echo.ucla.edu/volume2-Issue1/wells/wells-article-part4.html
Why couldn't NYCO have gotten her for their production???? Then maybe I'd use my ticket. I had "Ragtime" on my subscription (one of the main reasons I BOUGHT the subscription), only to be informed that they were replacing it with "Candide". Something to do with the rights or casting, I heard. SUCKS! Especially as I've SEEN that production already.
There are SO many great musicals NYCO could do, but I'm afraid with Mortier coming in, they won't be doing them!
Hey, Sanford -- email me and we'll talk. I generally buy two tickets to everything I see, and put the other ticket up for friends. But I LIKE Nathan Lane!! If you can see past that.....
Kristen is making her Met debut in 2010 in Ghost of Versailles, according to her website. And Brian Stokes Mitchell could sing kismet, but I don't like it very much.
Valkyrie, I checked out your webpage, but I didn[t see a way to email you.
Try this: P.Diva.NYC at gmail dot com....
As for Ms. C. making her Met debut -- I know, everyone over at the online Singer's group I belong to has been screaming about it. I like her, so I'm not averse, but I just think it's strange that she's supposed to do the role that was written for Marilyn Horne. Guess Corigliano will re-write it!
How about an operatic staging of Michael John Lachiusa's "Marie Christine"?
There are SO many great musicals NYCO could do, but I'm afraid with Mortier coming in, they won't be doing them!
Another plus for the Mortier regime, in my book. Now, it's true, when I signed up for the Gay Agenda all those many years ago, they forgot to hand me the "Loves Musicals" kit and gave me the "Loves sports and not just for the men" one instead, but I don't think opera houses *should* be doing musicals.
I can think of at least 2 dozen operas off the top of my head that are crying out for a production, and that's just the stuff that would appeal to people who like Wagner, Strauss and Puccini and so on, and opera companies do musicals? WTF? What a horrible waste of resources.
At least since James Conlon arrived, Los Angeles Opera has stopped doing those ghastly zarzuelas that Domingo insisted on doing.
the rationale i remembering reading for canceling ragtime was that frank galati and graciella daniele's schedules clashed with the time they had planned. i guess that's the difference in running an operatic artist schedule versus a theatre artist schedule.
As for talking about Chess above... does anybody know much about Benny and Björn's huge newer musical, Kristina från Duvemåla? It was a massive hit in Sweden, it ran for 4 years with over a million people seeing it. They've been working on a translation with Herbert Kretzmer for years, with a planned Broadway production, but apparently it has hit a snag again and is postponed. I think a lot of the music in it is pretty impressive, totally un-Abba-like of course, and written for a full symphonic orchestra. I'm just not so sure how a 3-hour piece about Swedish immigrants to Minnesota in the 1800's will go over here. Anybody have news or opinions about it?
Yeah - is there some problem with Opera companies actually staging (gasp) OPERAS that people are interested in seeing? Candide is ok, and funny. I get why companies do operettas from time to time, but please please PLEASE leave musicals OUT of the Met. And by the way, please ALSO leave the singers that sing them out of the Met.
Ms. C has come up before in these discussions, and I will admit, I have never seen her live, and perhaps she will be fabulous. But I was also rather shocked to see her cast in a role originally written for Jackie. I think it's slightly bizarre. I don't think that people that need to be mic'd should sing in opera houses. (I am assuming that Ms. C will have to be mic'd - maybe I'm wrong.) And I know that on that list "real" opera singers are included. I don't care. Opera shouldn't have to be mic'd unless you are singing in an outdoor stadium that seats 50,000 people.
Chenowith sounded hard and uningratiating heard "live" ( with mikes, that is) in the New York Philharmonicv CANDIDE so poorly directed by Lonny Price to be centered on 'his" diva, Patti LuPone. Her Cunegonde did not make one wish to hear her again attempt anything like classsical music standing next to classical musicians.
London's West End is awash in American TV's yesteryear, but does anyone really think that Chenowith's TV quotient remains strong enough to pull (high) paying customers into a musically meretrcious, overstuffed piece of sweaster queen nostalgia for the fashion sense displayed by the ancien regine like GHOSTS OF VERSAILLES?
Watch out and the ENO will revive HER FIRST ROMAN for Danielle de Niese, Rod Gilfry and Karla Burns.
personally I think that they should revive ON the 20th Century for Audra Mcdonald, don't get me wrong she no opera diva but I do know that she knows how to sing some opera, I studied with her old teacher, Cynthia Haymon check her out on you tube shes incredible but anyway that would be sort of cool with a mix of opera singers and musical theater people
sugarmezzo & Henry H: I am SO with you on the lousiness of doing musicals in opera houses, or by opera companies. It's a desperation factor. It is jumping the vocal shark.
I'll admit Audra can sing when the throws away the electronic support system and we actually hear her. I suspect she can, but she won't. So she doesn't belong in an opera house. Ditto Chenoweth. Just as Debbie V does not belong in a cabaret.
I know that I "should" like Audra, but I don't. I do, however, love "On The Twentieth Century". I saw the first tour with Rock Hudson and Judy Kaye. Treat Williams was also in it. I don't know anything about the Benny and Bjorn's newer show, though I knew that they had done one. It has to better than Pirate Queen. And why should the story keep anyone away. Most Happy Fella is about an Italian immigrant. Don Carle was originally about the Swedish king. Hell, if people were scared of shows about foreign cultures, most operas would never get produced.
Ms. C doesn't really have much of a TV quotient. The sitcom she rushed into after Wicked flopped in a couple of episodes, and Pushing Daisies (my dealer pushed cocaine, crystal meth, and X, but never daisies. How my life would have been different had he pushed flowers!) isn't really her show; she a supporting player. And long gone are the days when Broadway shows didn't use mics. My mother saw "The Skin Of Our Teeth", with Mary Martin, and could hear (so she says) Ethel Merman across the street in a different theater. By the way, the West End may be awash in American TV's yesteryears, but I think that Andrew Lloyd Webber more than made up for that.
Lydia Language: You are dead on with your comment - I hate hate hate it when opera singers try to sing jazz, blues, etc. Some of this music is great music, with specialists who sing it beautifully, and it is wasted by opera singers singing it poorly. It does a disservice to their voices AND to the music, in much the same way that Popera singers singing opera do a disservice to the music.
There can be no disservice to their voices because they all totally suck.
To whoever suggested him a few posts up, Brian Stokes Mitchell did Hajj in Kismet at Encores about two years ago. He wasn't that great.
I saw Marin Mazzie in the benefit concert of On the 20th Century that she and Douglas Sills did...she was perfect.
Krunoslav: Now, do be fair. Many of us are quite nostalgic indeed for the fashion sense of the Ancien Regine. Particularly the turbans.
Valkyrie: She almost signed to do Mabel in Pirates but withdrew after being pressured by the Met and her concert that year feeling (perhaps rightly) that she couldn't do both.
As for: "It may be quixotic of me, but I've always wished they'd get Dame Joan to sing the Old Lady," I've just gotten the most delightful flashback to Joan in the Who's Afraid of Opera series. Anyone else remember her running around drunk in the 30 minute La Perichole?
It's too bad La Sills never got to do that role.
http://cultureonthecheap.wordpress.com
Oh, also, NYCO pulled the plug on Ragtime as the director couldn't commit. But if you do use your tickets for the Big C, check out the article in Playbill on it. It's penned by yours truly.
(End shameless plug.)
Olivia: you can see "A quel diner" with Dame Joan on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQfpbH3LkAs&feature=related
G-d love YouTube. Thanks, Francois!
http://cultureonthecheap.wordpress.com
Sorry, La Cieca-- the typeface is so small, and I am too vain to wear my reading glasses even when Anatol is out shopping for Romanée-Conti.
At any rate, I didn't mean the much-missed Mme. Crespin ("Ouf!") but the 70s disco hostess.
Sanford, since when was DON CARLOS about a Swedish king? Maybe you are thinking of BALLO, about Gustavus III-- one of the kings who was one of the queens, to paraphrase the immortal WOMAN OF THE YEAR, which M. Mortier could revive for Karen Huffstodt.
yeah, Ballo.
Oliviagiovetti: Mabel!! Now THERE is a role I'd love her in! Not that I'm a huge G&S fan, rather the opposite, even with a roommate who is a member of NYGASP (her Katisha is great!).
I was sorry about Ragtime -- I love that musical. But I will look for your article in Playbill! Even if I don't go to Candide, my friend will use my tickets and deliver a Playbill....
Sanford: Ms. Chenoweth is one of the reasons my roommate and I started watching "Pushing Daisies" (along with the ever-fantastic Swoosie Kurtz and Ellen Greene)!
Krunoslav: I'd like to hear Ms. Chenoweth without a microphone -- I think her voice could stand on it's own. In "The Apple Tree" I was seriously annoyed by the use of the mikes, as all three artists didn't need them in that theater. Mikes ALWAYS make voices sound hard. Listen to her recordings where she drops the "cutesy" voice and just sings. It's quite lovely.
In general: About opera companies doing musical theater: I seem to recall that Ms. Sills' reasoning was to present these shows with trained voices, NOT with Bway crossovers, which was how many of them were done originally. There was a time it was acceptable for opera singers to appear on Broadway (Ms. Troyanos was in the chorus of "My Fair Lady", from what I've heard!). Now it's considered horrific. How times change.
And there ARE opera singers who do justice to popular music. The late great Eileen Farrell comes to mind!! Some of us CAN switch gears, we just don't get the chance to show it....
There was a time it was acceptable for opera singers to appear on Broadway (Ms. Troyanos was in the chorus of "My Fair Lady", from what I've heard!). Now it's considered horrific. How times change.
Opera singers haven't completely disappeared from the Broadway stage. Harolyn Blackwell was in the chorus of the 1980 revival of WEST SIDE STORY, and later took over Maria. She also played, aptly, Cunegonde in the 1997 revival of CANDIDE. Danielle De Niese began her career playing Eponine and Cosette on Broadway when she was a teenager; I actually saw her in the former role and she was quite good, with eloquent English diction and a strong Broadway belt. Rod Gilfry did THE NEW MOON at Encores five years ago and was great. It's also only been twenty years since Teresa Stratas did RAGS, which was recorded with another Broadway-turned-opera singer, Julia Migenes, the original Hodel. And Tatiana Troyanos was in the chorus of THE SOUND OF MUSIC, not MY FAIR LADY.
Is opera nowadays lacking decent singers and has to borrow them from Broadway and musicals? Opera singers are under tremendous pressure and singing in a musical is a reprieve vocally, and a nice way to make a living after they have past their prime, like Pinza. Peter Hofmann who sang Lohengrin at the Met to Matron's Elsa- he wasn't a Wagnerian tenor of notice anyway- ended up singing "Fhantom in the Opera" in Germany. But to use miked-up-to-death voices- if they can be heard- in legitimate opera houses where natural voices have been worshiped is an abomination, unless you like to hear caricaturized opera singing, like the recent production of the Rise and Fall of the C of M at the LA Opera. Maybe Carol Channing, finally, is ready to join the Met!
I think that part of the problem is that lots of people want to "cross over". Opera lovers have always worshipped their favorites, but it took a long time for the general public to find someone to worship the way Geraldine Farrar and Enrico Caruso. Pavarotti really kind of widened the audience. And Three Tenors, for better or worse, proved that there is a lot of money to be made by "crossing over". hence, The Three Sopranos, Three Mo Tenors (we need Three Homo Tenors!), Three Irish Tenors (my favorite), Il Divo, etc. And some people want to cross over the other way, and either aim for "legitimacy", or be challenged by other material. But as in a discussion elsewhere on Parterre, Let me state again that ego plays a big part. If your support people are telling you that you can sing opera, whether you can or not, and that's where your head is at, that's what you're going to do. And let's not forget Reri Grist. She had 10 years of Broadway shows under her belt (not all of them musicals) before she switched to opera.
"And there ARE opera singers who do justice to popular music. The late great Eileen Farrell comes to mind!! Some of us CAN switch gears, we just don't get the chance to show it...."
Oh honey, please don't come over hear and compare yourself to Miss Farrell, I've heard you sing....
This isn't the wannabe singers board where you normally troll with your mantra "I am a singer, I am a singer". You're looking for the Florence Foster Jenkins board.
WHy is it necessary to get so personally insulting?
"Daniel, I think SHaron should star in "Penetrating Wagner's Ring" in the "pants" role of Wagner. Repeatedly."
Is this an example of your gentility from the other thread? It's a bit silly at this point to pretend that you're anything other than a hypocrite. You pick on the people who you decide are your "enemies" and flatter those who will agree with you. I think it's unfortunate that a handfull of recent entries to this board are trying to turn it into a chat room rather than keeping it to a commentary on the subject at hand. How many "entries" did you and Daniel use to beat the subject of your dislike for Sharon Graham to death? Why don't you find a private room to whack each other off insread of subjecting everyone else to it?
You selectively quoted my posts about Sharon Graham. I commented on her for the same reason I commented on yours. Because she was insulting people on a personal level rather than cussing the topics that La Cieca had posted. I find your attitude and presentation hateful. And since you think Daniel and I should hook up, you should ask him how our relationship on this website started out. I actually not a hypocrite; I'm very consistent in my view that we are all entitled to our opinions, but none of us have the right to be that rude.
Sorry, discussing... not cussing.
For someone with the handle "tootiredtocare", you obviously care a great deal about what other people say here, and take pleasure in being vehemently nasty. You must be a very unhappy person to be that mean.
I apologize that you found my singing so very repellent, and hope that in future you will avoid performances I am taking part in -- leave them to those who DO like my singing. I'd hate for you to suffer that much again!
And Sanford -- thank you!
Toby Spence is a hunk.
He can and will more than hold his own against the scene stealing "torreadorable" Chenoweth. Especially if the production is reblocked and he removes his shirt. And yes he can sing. The voice is lovely and the style is alert and elegant.
Because of his looks and exposure on BBC w/ Ades Tempest and Mozart roies he is indeed a popular tenor but NOT at all in the Watson mold.
He is also quite able to hold his own on stage. He is one of the growing number of acting matinee idol tenorhunks.
I hope for a telecast of the French or German edition of Candide w/ that other adorable piece of tenorial and gifted eye candy, Maxim Miranov, And if I and the world are lucky w/ the other Gheorghiu, Theodora. I was captivated w/ her in the Reine Elisabeth Concours of a few years back. She is adorable! Think Audrey Hepburn/Tautou w/ a trill!
Maxin is yet another tenor w/ washboard abs and florid technique. Where are they all coming from!
And he can give Florez a fioratura run. roulade pour roulade! I grew up in an era where Valenti > Alva > Kraus and much later Gimenez (still singing ) were the standard for light elegant tenors. None could sing fioratura like these now! Pity my ears!
Ray back to lurking!
I will repeat one more, that I couldn't care less about your singing, as you appear to me to be one more delusional pay-to-sing wannabe who will get your big break when you're what? 60?. But I strongly take objection to the fact that you have this clownish desire to present yourself as an equal to people like Farrell, who I knew, who actually did it, and to an etraordinary degree. If you would simply limit yourself to comments on the subjet at hand, well that's fine, but you always seem to want to promote your own "artistry", which opens you up to critiscm, as far as I'm concerned.
Ooooooohhhhhhh, guess you told me. Feel better?
Maddy: Thanks -- of course it was "Sound of Music" -- should have double-checked IBDB!
SO, to move to a related area of discussion -- looking through the Met Archives online recently, and curious about the list of operas the company has done in the past. It would be fascinating to see the scores for some of them (some were performed once or twice, others had a number of performances over several years, then were not done again). If they really wanted to mix it up, perhaps they should search their own archives. Not that they would ... but it's an interesting thought!
Actually, it's true - Eileen Farrell could sing anything and it was AWESOME.
tootiredtocare- you are quite correct that sanford and I pretty much "held the fort" for a short time on the other thread "about" another contributor- so what? You might like to take into account that our discussion only began after we had both been very unfairly attacked by that same person.
Furthermore- it was pretty evident at that time that no one else had anything to say (or to contribute) and so they simply left us to it- there was nothing stopping anyone chiming in and even changing the subject if they wanted to - but they didn't.
This just adds up to a beat up about nothing on your part although I wryly note, you yourself don't exactly shrink from serially insulting others, with no less than three posts insulting someone who didn't insult you.
If you've had a rough Christmas honey- get over it, but don't take it out on us. This is a blog and people are entitled to communicate however they wish without your permission. Variety (and even attacks like yours, are just "grist for the mill."
For that reason I couldn't care less about your "whacking off" suggestion for sanford and me. You can say what you like- I just hope that next time your insults are a little more clever and witty because I do like a good laugh.
Daniel (whack), you're last post (whack) was such a f%#$ing turn on (whack). aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh
Alright, gentlemen, your last 2 posts made me laugh. I'm calling it quits and settling down to the first of (hopefully) many cranberry martinis.
I'll have a Margeritta but first a nice hot shower and a quick rubdown with a whip.
Dame Joan's Drunk Song was fun, but I did see Stratas do it at the Met, and the best ever was Flicka at Town Hall.
Singers on Broadway used to be able to SING, so it was a pleasure to hear them later when they turned up on the opera stage (John Reardon, anybody? and Grist was the ideal Norina, Oscar, Zerbinetta, Olympia) or off it (Pinza, Traubel, Stratas). Upshaw sings Rodgers & Hart and Sondheim and Vernon Duke very well indeed; on youtube you can hear Luca Pisaroni (talk about HUNKS) singing a delicious Embraceable You ... and didn't all New York fall at Karita's feet when she concluded a recital with "Good night! Good night! And when you go to sleep, dream of me...." (I missed her "The Man I Love," alas.) Jerry Hadley did a charming Lydia the Tattooed Lady. Kiri's Porter and Kern albums (though NOT her unfortunate attempts at jazz) are delicious, and Hampson ain't bad at Porter neither.
There are some who can and some who can't. In the old days, nearly everyone on the "legitimate" stage -- at least the ones who intended to sing ballads like Irene Dunne or Nancy Dussault -- had operatic training and knew how to sell it. Today no one does, and last summer's Town Hall concert of American operetta hits sung by Broadway stars and starlets and asteroids was a desperately dreary occasion. (Jonas Kaufmann! Come home, all is forgiven! Actually, I was mad about you even before you ambled through Heidelberg.)
But the middle ground is gone -- either they're rock singers who haven't a clue, or they're opera singers who haven't a clue even when they used to sing in rock bands (Licitra, Castronovo). Actually Peter Hofmann in Phantom is the best casting choice he ever made -- at least from my p.o.v. since I never go to Webber shows. No one trains properly because, except on the opera stage, they don't need to. The electric tit is always there on which the unlearned and timid may suckle.
Operetta was CREATED for the middling operatic voice, and a real opera voice with a dollop of style could always hit the gold there. (Tauber, Gedda, Schwarzkopf, Rothenberger, Crespin, Lott, Munsel....) That's how the Volksoper stays so sublimely in business. But over here, no one knows any longer what operetta IS. A punchline -- that's all that's left of it.
I went to the Ohio Light Opera Festival last year -- dear old crowd (I felt conspicuously adolescent, a rare pleasure these days) but not a single voice could be heard, or a lyric distinguished, over the blare of a full orchestra in a very small theater. Young, healthy, pretty singers -- without a diction in the lot. (Dicks, yes.) True, the pieces (Herzogin von Chicago, Vogelhandler) were sung in English, so the lyrics were NOT distinguished ... still, one would have liked to hear them ... to find out what was going on ... and why the people on stage thought they were being so funny. Sad sad sad.
Audra McDonald graduated from Juilliard. Kristin Chenoweth has an MA in opera performance and won a full scholarship to Philly's Academy of Vocal Arts through the Met National Council auditions. Angela Christian (Woman In White and Thoroughly Modern Millie) went to the Boston Conservatory. Judy Kuhn graduated from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. Rebecca Luker has a BA in theater and sang with Michigan Opera Theater. There are classically trained singers all over Broadway. Unfortunately, not everyone has the training to sing without mics. I personally hate the sound of amplified shows, because it is frequently hard to discern where the voices are coming from; they could be in front of you, to the side, or behind you. Worse, though, than that is lipsyncing (as opposed to Lypsinka, who's terrific, I hear). I was shocked to watch the DVD of Liza With A Z, which was supposed to be live, but not was she mic'd, she lipsynced part of it. And before someone points out how much dancing she did on the show, Donna McKechnie.
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I agree with you; as someone who attended the Chicago Musical College, I remember quite clearly the students I knew who were passing Opera Theater because they showed up and paid tuition, not because they could sing. My post was in response to Lydia, who stated that no one trains properly. There are a lot of people who train properly and who could sing without mics. Whether we want to hear them or not wasn't addressed in my post.
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