What makes a broadway diva

Perhaps noted British critic Kenneth Tynan best summarized her place in the American theatre when he called her "the strutted incarnation of style," and added: "From Merman one learns that there is no need to strain, wink, scream or wail.

All that is necessary is a clean, clear voice, monumental breath control, built-in timing and sincerity. She can mould a ballad as movingly as the brashest marching song. We rise to her indomitable simplicity and wonder, as our palms steam with applause, what there ever was about Callas that we deemed worthier of our tears.

In a recent London newspaper interview, LuPone had this to say about her most-recent concert act, Matters of the Heart : "This one was very difficult to birth. I knew I didn't want it to be big Broadway showtunes. I wanted to sing original, contemporary material. I feel if a song has got a good melody and a good plot, it's a show tune -- or it might as well be a show tune.

Stay tuned for dates. And, "Bravo Profiles: Betty Buckley," an insightful documentary that includes an interview with the Tony Award-winning actress as well as footage from Buckley's recent sold-out Bottom Line concert will air on Bravo November 1 at 10 p.

The performers will be backed by the New York Philharmonic, and the event, which will be recorded, will celebrate Sondheim's 70th birthday. The September issue of Playbill will feature an interview with the rising star, and what follows are some of Chenoweth's choice quotes from Merv Rothstein's article: about growing up in Oklahoma : "I grew up singing myself to sleep every night.

Well, that's all for now. Happy diva-watching! The Steven Spielberg-directed film premieres December 10 in theatres. The stars of The Music Man take to Instagram to show off their charming offstage chemistry. Harris' Slave Play. Billy Crystal's Mr. Crystal, Randy Graff, David Paymer, and Chasten Harmon will star in the musical based on his film about the rise and fall of a once-beloved comedian. Follow Playbill Now. Want Discount Tickets? Both songs were met with enthusiastic applause.

Hatchie talks musical influences, world travels before High Noon Saloon show High Noon Saloon filled up quickly on a Wednesday night for an evening full of emotional release. Bands Hatchie and Read…. Peters exuded drama — there is no other way to put it.

LuPone is thrillingly larger than life: rambunctious on stage and off, she takes audiences to a world where drama is the norm. After setting the street on fire in Evita and Anything Goes , however, she became a great star in exile; fans of her glorious singing, with its joyful blare and leering swoops, had to content themselves with concerts.

Her style is stamped with an implicit credo: all guts, all glory. Historians of the Broadway musical, from the academy to the piano bar, agree on one thing: the archetypal Broadway diva is a woman. Ethel Merman, Mary Martin, Gwen Verdon, Carol Channing — legendary ladies such as these were the bulbs that lit the Great White Way in its golden and silver ages, and still dominate the mythology of the genre.

Sometimes just a single stamp can leave a deep impression. Channing was nothing if not idiosyncratic: an Al Hirschfeld caricature in the flesh, all platinum hair and two-tiered grin, with a trombone voice that slides out by surprise.

Equal parts blond bombshell and battle-ax, she sang in a skeleton key that somehow unlocks every song. Her curmudgeonly, whiskey-drenched style exploded with a rare force of character: a tough yet tender blend of honesty, rue and mordant wit. A top Broadway ingenue in such s classics as The Music Man and Candide , Barbara Cook emerged later as a premiere interpreter of the classic Broadway songbook—an accomplishment recognized with a Kennedy Center Honor in Her exquisite honesty had a restorative effect on the material she sang; her voice spun straw into gold.

Despite her success in concerts and cabaret, Cook remained a theater singer to the core. Listen closely to her recordings, and you may hear the fabled lullaby of Broadway itself. A diminutive blond with a piercing, helium-tinged belting voice and a comic manner that harks back to great funnywomen of old, Kristin Chenoweth is the most distinctive musical-theater star to emerge in decades. Betty Buckley is a genuinely eccentric and eccentrically genuine performer: part Method actor, part shaman, part little Betty Lynn a long way from West Texas.

Her voice can sound haunted in its lower registers, then rise to a steely high belt, with a pulsing, magisterial vibrato. Her greatest turns—Grizabella in Cats , Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard —have been in rotting-glamour roles that seized on the defining paradox of her persona: a compellingly intense yin-yang of fragility and imperiousness.

Her gorgeous voice and impeccable diction melt the distinction between speaking and singing, and her achingly beautiful performances in The King and I and other projects have shown an artist committed to challenging herself in new pieces Far From Heaven, The Bridges of Madison County as well as exploring classic titles.

She disappears into roles rather than wearing them like old-timey ball gowns, and shows that a diva can be measured not by her showy extravagance but by her soulfulness and complexity.

But the peak of her stage career came in , when producer David Merrick—in an unprecedented move—replaced the entire cast of his long-running hit Hello, Dolly! Original musicals must rise to her. Anna in The King and I to the Witch in Shakespeare in the Park's Into the Woods , she has been a remarkable chameleon, earning two Tonys and a wheelbarrow of critical bouquets along the way.

Sutton Foster Charleston-ed giddily into the Broadway spotlight when the producers of Thoroughly Modern Millie plucked her out of the kickline during out-of-town tryouts, and replaced the lead actor with her. She opened Millie in , nabbed a Tony Award and never looked back. She had that swoony, trembling delivery you hear in recordings before the songbook got jazzier and brassier. It was also, tragically, her last: During the run, she died of cancer at Mueller is the rare Broadway star whose persona is grounded in humility; she radiates a charismatic decency.

Nobody could shake it like Dorothy Loudon. A master of letting loose, she honed her comic craft in nightclubs and a series of short-lived Broadway shows, plumbing her quavering, expressive pipes to madcap effect. True to her name, she was often both dotty and loud.

She hit the jackpot in , flouncing gleefully through her role as the villainous Miss Hannigan in Annie. But in her next show, the musical drama Ballroom , Loudon proved that she could not only split your sides but break your heart. Amazingly, she was just 21 years old.