joevitus said: "pmensky said: "joevitus said: "pmensky said: "jimmycurry01 said: "pmensky said: "I miss the days when my first thought and concern upon hearing about the casting of a lead role in a big Broadway musical wasn’t about whether or not the performer could sing the material better than mediocrely."
We're you born in the 1920s? I think people have been debating this sort of things for decades.
No, I was not born in the 1920s, and no, people haven’t been doubting whether actors cast in leading roles could sing the score better than mediocrely for decades."
Interesting. I think of the conversations that revolved around stars like Lucille Ball in Wildcat in the 1960's, Katherine Hepburn leading Coco and Lauren Bacall starring in Applause! and Woman of the Year in the '70's. Lots of talk about whether these women had adequate voices for leading a Broadway show, and that's going back almost sixty years, total.
Even with Sondheim, who generally insisted on strong vocalists throughout his career, you have Lee Remick and Harry Guardino in the '60's, Alexis Smith and Glynis Johns in the 1970's. Whenever you have someone not primarily famous for musicals in talks to lead a musical, this sort of conversation comes up.
And there's a fairly famous musical theater star who reigned from the '20's through the '50's whose vocals were always questioned: Gertrude Lawrence. In short, this conversation is as old as the hills.
And even with musical performers with clearly superb voices, there's often a discussion of whether a role is appropriate for their vocal range or not. For instance, Grobin's casting in Sweeney Todd, He's not in the traditional vocal range for that role, so there will be discussion about it. Doesn't have anything to do with his abilities, just about whether that role will work with that voice (short answer: yes).
I had no issue with Hathaway's vocals in Les Mis, however, so I don't know why the conversation would come up here."
When I said “I miss the days when MY first thought…” I’m 47 years old and have been seeing professional theatre since the early 1980s. No, I do not recall the types of recent discussions that have been going on about competency being had in my early days of theatre going up until recently. Thanks for the history lesson, though."
Actually, it turns out Woman of the Year was 1981. There were questions about Rex Smith and Linda Ronstadt in Pirates of Penzance, also '81. Seems to me there was talk of whether Karen Akers had the voice to sustain seven performances a week when she did Nine in 1983. Even over Sarah Brightman in Phantom when it premiered here (did she have the voice, or was she just married to the right man?) in 1988. That's just a few instances off the top of my head. All from the first decade in which you started going to see shows."
Well, I was like between 7 and 9 years old during these instances, so I really wasn’t contemplating the vocal range of Karen Akers or Sarah Brightman at the time. So, yeah, again, thanks tor the history lessons. Whatever makes you happy!