Among the ladies to whom Kelli O’Hara dedicated her October 10 solo show at the 92nd St. Y are the friends she’s sung on stage with, the women who helped her succeed, and the stars—living and dead—who inspired her to become one of the leading sopranos of our time.
Backed by her longtime accompanists Dan Lipton on piano and Justin Goldner on guitars and mandolin, she began the evening with Sondheim’s “What More Do I Need?” (from Saturday Night), because, she said, it evokes the way she felt in her first New York apartment.
Growing up on a farm in Oklahoma, watching movie musicals on TV, she aspired to sing like Barbara Cook and Shirley Jones. She joked about seeing her sister out-audition her to play the eponymous Annie in a local production. But then she paired “Cockeyed Optimist” from South Pacific with “Tomorrow” from Annie!
Besides Nelly Forbush, O’Hara has played several of Rodgers’ and Hammerstein’s leading ladies, notably Anna in The King and I. So she did “Hello, Young Lovers,” and “Getting to Know You” (on which she had the audience sing along). Playing Anna at Lincoln Center launched her friendship with Ruthie Ann Miles, who played Lady Thiang.
O’Hara was young when she performed in Sondheim’s Follies, but she longed to sing the older women’s songs. Now, she acknowledged with a shrug, she is old enough to do her favorite: “In Buddy’s Eyes.” And she has children now, too. “Fable” is a lullaby she wrote for her eleven-year-old daughter.
Kelli O’Hara shows how high sopranos can go—even if their songs are “Not Funny.” (Photo by Richard Termine)
It galls O’Hara that, in musicals, soubrettes and “belters” get the laughs while sopranos don’t. Or so she complained in “Not Funny,” a hilarious novelty that Michael Heitzman and Ilene Reid wrote for the late Rebecca Luker. O’Hara learned it from Kristen Chenoweth: a particularly good friend, she said, who got her some early auditions, and an agent.
But it wasn’t only her fellow sopranos to whom she dedicated the show. In a previous performance that required a costume change, O’Hara couldn’t unfasten her gown, tried pulling it off, and wound up with it stuck over her head. Her dresser, who’d been with her on Broadway, untangled her just in time to get out and do her next number. So, in honor of the dresser, she sang “Just In Time.”
That led into a reminiscence of meeting Betty Comden who, with Adolph Green wrote those lyrics to Jule Styne’s music for the show Bells Are Ringing. That triumvirate also created the song O’Hara ended her set with: “Make Someone Happy,” from Do Re Mi.
But of course, she did an encore: a tribute to Julie Andrews in My Fair Lady, with Lerner and Loewe’s “I Could Have Danced All Night.”
We could have listened all night. O’Hara is one fair lady indeed!
Top: Kelli O’Hara at the 92nd St. Y with accompanists Dan Lipton and Justin Goldner (Photo by Richard Termine)
This concert opened the new Tisch Music season at the Y. For information about upcoming shows go to www.92NY.org or phone 212-415-5755.
