I am starting to plan a benefit concert for my local theater for the fall. The concept behind it is that women say men get the best roles in theater, but I say women get the best SONGS! (ie the Nathan Lane/Gregory Hines duet from the 1995 Tony Awards.) So I would like everyone's opinions on what they thing the BEST ever diva songs from musicals are. Please list your top 3 choices or so. Thanks for the help!
Or, an oldie, but still a goodie, "Art Is Calling Me" from The Enchantress. Especially if you have somebody with a more legit voice as opposed to a belter.
(Diva songs are like Lays potato chips, no one can eat just one)
Send in the Clowns from A Little Night Music
Cabaret and Maybe This Time from Cabaret
All That Jazz from Chicago
With One Look and As If We Never Said Goodbye from Sunset Boulevard
People from Funny Girl
I Could Have Danced All Night from My Fair Lady
I'm Still Here from Follies
Ladies Who Lunch from Company
There's No Business Like Show Business from Annie Get Your Gun
If anyone ever tells you that you put too much Parmesan cheese on your pasta, stop talking to them. You don't need that kind of negativity in your life.
most of those are songs sung by divas, but decidedly NOT diva songs. one needs to have attained diva status with the real b*llbusters (e.g., And I Am Telling You) before they can assume permission to divatize a ballad like "Send In the Clowns".
If we're trying to *make* a diva, that's a seriously random list ...
"one needs to have attained diva status with the real b*llbusters (e.g., And I Am Telling You) before they can assume permission to divatize a ballad like "Send In the Clowns".
Define "diva". Dame Judi Dench sang Send in the Clowns in the London revival and performed it better than anyone else before or since. (And that hack Barbra Streisand also performed it on one of her Broadway albums).
If anyone ever tells you that you put too much Parmesan cheese on your pasta, stop talking to them. You don't need that kind of negativity in your life.
I vote for Meadowlark and Colored Lights. I was woefully unaware of the latter until hearing Julia Murney sing the pants off it at that Kander and Ebb benefit "Come to the Cabaret" a few months back. Breathtaking.
I'm inclined to say The Music and the Mirror, but I don't think it'd work without the dancing. =P
When I see the phrase "the ____ estate", I imagine a vast mansion in the country full of monocled men and high-collared women receiving letters about productions across the country and doing spit-takes at whatever they contain.
-Kad
"I'm inclined to say The Music and the Mirror, but I don't think it'd work without the dancing."
Yeah, that's why I didn't include it. It's not going to show up on Nana Mouskari Sings The Divas.
If anyone ever tells you that you put too much Parmesan cheese on your pasta, stop talking to them. You don't need that kind of negativity in your life.
not sure (it's a little like the i'll-know-it-when-i-see-it definition for pornography) ... but isn't "Dame" just "diva" in british english?
maybe it's just a vague question. but, seriously: if the question is, "what are good songs for a diva to sing?" then i stand down. but if it's "what are good songs for making a diva?" (which, possibly incorrectly, is how i took it), then some of those songs just aren't on the roadmap to divadom.
the dench example kind of makes the point -- singing "send in the clowns" didn't make judi a diva ... being sung by judi granted "send in the clowns" entry into the canon.
not sure that made it a whole lot clearer, but divas get a different repertoire than aspiring divas. oooh ... that makes more sense -- i'll go with that. final answer.
Great suggestions and thoughts. Please keep them coming. And to clarify... they don't necessarily have to be "diva" songs, just the greatest ecamples of songs that are sung by females in musicals. It's just the best songs tend to be (but are NOT exclusively) "diva" oriented either meaning big and belty OR sung by a legendary actress.
Thanks again! This is helping more than you could possibly know!
"I Can Cook Too" from On The Town "Always True To You (In My Fashion)" from Kiss Me, Kate "Maybe This Time" from Cabaret ...and I love the medley of "I'm The Greatest Star/Secondhand Rose/Don't Rain on My Parade" that Streisand does on her Timeless album.
<-----Bernadette Peters and Alexander Hanson in A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC.
Send in the clowns...Send in the crowds!
"I prefer neurotic people. I like to hear rumblings beneath the surface."-Stephen Sondheim