Ruth Leon recommends… Audra McDonald – Summertime
Ruth Leon recommendsAudra Macdonald – Summertime
Audra Macdonald has won six Tony Awards. Six. And she deserved every one of them. It’s worth mentioning also that she’s won Emmy and Grammy Awards too. No superlative is sufficient for this fabulous star of the American musical theatre.
Here is her definitive performance of the showstopper from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess.
“Fabulous” is certainly the word. Saw her in the original Broadway production of Ragtime and loved everything about her performance.
Totally agree…I saw her a few years earlier in Carousel at Lincoln Center Theater. She wasn’t a star in the making, she WAS a star.
If you want to listen to a wonderful example of Audra’s range, listen to her “Alabama Song” from the Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny with the LA Opera. If the Met wants to use cross-over singers, Ms. McDonald is the one with real (bankable) presence.
She’s great but she’s only won 6 Tony Awards /s
Mademoiselle Audra:
Sensationnelle !!!
Would be lovely if you could do her the courtesy of spelling her name correctly. (McDonald)
There’s nothing artificial or stilted in this great rendition. It stylistically flows from her masterfully. In the more restricted, purer, operatic version of this classic, Leontyn Price in her 1963 recording with Skitch Henderson has her own definitive performance.
6 Tony’s.
and yes – she’s a queen.
Where’d you get 10 from?
One would assume well-researched journalism?…..!
Never mind that she took the limelight away from her colleague at the Tony awards singing this song instead of letting the actress who actually sings the song perform it at the Tonys and by the way she is mean spirited and cunning to others backstage and to quote on evening in her dressing room, “I hate white men and that includes you” to one of the hairdressers- first hand knowledge and she refused to go on stage with a male understudy because in her eyes he isn’t good enough-the real stories will come out one day
Please stop spreading spurious rumours. You clearly have no inside knowledge here. She is gracious and kind to all; when preparing to go onstage, she withdraws into herself and doesn’t engage in idle chitchat, but the idea that she would behave poorly to anyone is ludicrous. As for hating white men, she married to two of them. Your comment betrays your lack of access.
No my dear- contradictions in life happen all the time -not rumors at all and she is not gracious back stage and behind the scenes and I did have access very close access at Porgy and Bess and it wasn’t fun.
I saw her perform this just a few weeks ago at The Cleveland Orchestra’s Blossom Festival. I found out later that she had stepped away from the microphone, giving us all a chance to hear a masterful performance in all its vocal delicateness, and raw emotion.