There was a most auspicious debut in St. Louis last night. Soprano Elise LaBarge, showing more of a feel for the world of cabaret than singers twice her age, offered her first program, about 75 minutes of Kurt Weill music delivered in an unassuming manner, but with great promise for the future. Young and attractive, with a smile that went from perky to sexy and back again without apparent effort, LaBarge sang, and chatted, and sang some more, charming a sellout crowd in the Kranzberg Arts Center.
There were a couple of rough spots, and early on some harshness in the high notes, but she caught every word to perfection and she sang with an understanding and command of a mature performer.
LaBarge, a St. Louisan educated at Washington University, has performed around town as an actress, and as a singer with the Union Avenue Opera Company. In fact, that company's conductor and artistic director, pianist Scott Schoonover, was her accompanist, and Victoria Bannon joined in on both violin and viola. Allyson Ditchey directed.
Weill, a German composer who moved from Berlin to Paris in the 1930s, and then on to New York and Hollywood, had a superb sardonic touch, and a singer, Lotte Lenya, who had the same attribute. Weill and Lenya, by the way, married, divorced and married again. LaBarge chose music from each of his three homes. She came on stage with long, bright red gloves and sandals for "Mack the Knife," "Barbara's Song" and "Pirate Jenny," with Bertolt Brecht's lyrics from "A Threepenny Opera," along with a powerful rendition, in German, of the Marlene Dietrich favorite, "Falling in Love Again," but with a less husky voice. LaBarge then to Paris and exchanged the gloves for a beret for a good cover of the Edith Piaf standby, "La Vie en Rose," and a better one of Mistinguette's favorite, "My Man," later a trademark for Fanny Brice and then Barbra Streisand as Brice in "Funny Girl."
Arriving in this country in the mid-1930s, Weill created a number of Broadway musicals, beginning with "One Touch of Venus," whose lyricist was Ogden Nash, the creator of wonderfully humorous doggerel like "Candy is dandy/ But liquor is quicker." LaBarge really scored with "I'm a Stranger Here Myself," playing, in order, innocent, winsome and sexy.
A nod to three great American musical theater composers followed as LaBarge offered a fine rendition of Cole Porter's "Anything Goes," from the show of the same name; Leonard Bernstein's "Little Bit in Love" from "Wonderful Town," and the Richard Rodgers-Oscar Hammerstein II "Hello Young Lovers," from "The King and I." It would be terrific if LaBarge pronounced Bernstein's name correctly before she next sings one of his songs--it's Bern-STINE and not Bern-STEEN.
She closed, in delightfully witty style, with "The Saga of Jenny," singing Ira Gershwin's lyrics for the ground-breaking 1941 musical "Lady in the Dark," with Gertrude Lawrence as Jenny, who "would make up her mind."
Weill (1900-1950) was a talented composer, working with a variety of the lyricists. His music often was political, bitter and sardonic, an understandable attitude for a German Jew driven out of his own country by the Nazis.
LaBarge, with excellent stage presence, demonstrated it when she veered far away from one of her numbers, but stopped, explained briefly and scored high marks with it on the second try. She has a bright future ahead, given the rough road of show business, and will sing again tonight, but promoter Jim Dolan happily reported that it's already a sellout.
Elise LaBarge's cabaret performance opened Friday night at the Kranzberg Arts Centre and continues there on Saturday.
--Joe
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