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STAGE TUBE: Broadway Flashback- Watch 18-Year-Old Laura Benanti Sing 'The Sound of Music' on Broadway!

By: Mar. 01, 2015
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Before appearing in THE SOUND OF MUSIC LIVE! on NBC in 2013, Tony Award-winner Laura Benanti made her Broadway debut in the same show in 1998. But that time, an 18-year-old Benanti was the understudy to Maria rather than Elsa Schrader. Below, BroadwayWorld brings you a throwback clip of the young Broadway star beautifully performing the title song, "The Sound of Music."

Earlier today, Benanti Tweeted concerning the video, saying she was "terrified" at the time.

In 1998, director Susan H. Schulman staged the first Broadway revival of The Sound of Music, with Rebecca Luker as Maria and Michael Siberry as Captain von Trapp. It also featured Patti Cohenour as Mother Abbess, Jan Maxwell as Elsa Schrader, Fred Applegate as Max Detweiler, Dashiell Eaves as Rolf, Patricia Conolly as Frau Schmidt and Laura Benanti, in her Broadway debut, as Luker's understudy. Later, Luker and Siberry were replaced by Richard Chamberlain as the Captain and Benanti as Maria. Lou Taylor Pucci made his Broadway debut as the understudy for Kurt von Trapp. This revival opened on March 12, 1998, at the Martin Beck Theatre, where it ran for 15 months. It then went on tour in North America. This production was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical.

Benanti can currently be seen on the ABC musical drama series Nashville. Benanti can also be seen guest-starring on CBS's The Good Wifeand last year received rave reviews for her performance as Baroness Elsa Schrader in NBC's The Sound of Music Live! She starred in the NBC series The Playboy Club; Go On opposite Matthew Perry; and in the FX comedy series Starved.

On stage, Benanti received a Tony-Award for her portrayal of Gypsy Rose Lee opposite Patti Lupone in the 2008 Broadway revival of Gypsy directed by Arthur Laurents. She received three additional Tony-Award nominations for her performances in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Into the Woods, and Swing.

Benanti completed a week-long engagement at the popular New York cabaret club, 54 Below, for which The New York Timeshailed her as an "supremely confident" performer whose "bright, full soprano, with its semioperatic heft, can go almost anywhere." In September 2013, she released her debut album, "In Constant Search of the Right Kind of Attention: Live at 54 BELOW" on Broadway Records to ecstatic reviews. Laura currently performs her cabaret concerts in venues around the country and even recently performed for the President and First Lady of the United States.




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