broadway opera songs?

[singingshowgirl]

Posted: 9/7/08 at 11:15am

helloooo...so for a musical theater performance class, I have to pick a "Broadway opera" song...my teacher has defined this as something with long sustained and dramatic high notes. She gave us examples that stuff from Piazza, Phantom, Candide and a lot of 1950s musicals could be Broadway opera. she did say that she would prefer it to NOT be Rogers and Hammerstein because we do a separate unit on them. I realize it's impossible for people to help pick material without hearing one's voice (i am generally a mezzo-soprano), but if people have any suggestions of shows to look into that would fit this Broadway opera category, I would be oh so happy. any help would be great!

[SporkGoddess]

Posted: 9/7/08 at 11:36am

Ricky Ian Gordon for sure. And Kismet's fairly operatic, I would say. Does Floyd Collins count, I wonder?

You may want to consider some of Margaret's part from Piazza. Victoria Clark is a soprano, but a lot of it could be sung by a mezzo. For instance, "Dividing Day" is often too low for me (I'm a soprano).

I'm not sure if I agree with your teacher's definition, though. I would not call Phantom operatic by any means.

Updated On: 9/7/08 at 11:36 AM

[musikman]

Posted: 9/7/08 at 1:41pm

Showgirl, do you happen to know your vocal range more specifically, cause that could help us to determine what to suggest. If you say you're a mezzo, you may be a bit out of luck, considering that most roles written for a mezzo back in the Golden Age were more for the belter/feisty woman character ala Babe, or Nellie. Much, or most of the legit, quasi-operatic repertoire was given to the ingenues, or the typical Rodgers and Hammerstein torch anthem.

I don't know how high your range goes, but if you need to avoid R & H, you might want to try Somebody Somewhere from The Most happy fella. Or you could sing So in Love from Kiss me Kate, which might be a better choice as it doesn't go quite as high as somebody somewhere.

If all of this fails, you could sing something like "When frederick was a little lad" from Pirates of Penzance, which technically is light opera, but did play broadway in that famous Joseph Papp production back in the 70s.