| Larry Fuller remembered it very differently | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 08:50 pm EST 02/01/21 | |
| In reply to: re: I had tickets to see Kahn and ended up seeing Kaye - PlayWiz 12:15 pm EST 02/01/21 | |
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| In Andy Propst's bio of Cy Coleman, Larry Fuller was quoted saying that Coleman, Comden and Green wanted Madeline Kahn (at least in part) precisely because they thought she could sing high notes. They thought she'd be able to sing high Cs. You would think that they would have spoken to her about this before hiring her. Kahn had been unable or unwilling to sing the high B at the end of "Ice Cream" eight times a week in She Loves Me at Town Hall in 1977 with a four-piece band of piano, violin, harp and one woodwind player, and that was only a three-week run. Even back in Two by Two, she reportedly did not always sing the high C at the end of "The Golden Ram." You think that people in the business talk to each other about these things, but I guess not. In this case, it seems that they hired Kahn without even talking to her about high notes. According to Fuller, when Coleman went through the score for her on the first day of rehearsal, she told him that she would not sing above a G in a role she was doing eight times a week. Fuller remembers Coleman telling Prince this, and Prince saying that he thought the reason they wanted her was because she could sing high notes. Fuller went on to say, perhaps inaccurately, that they compromised on three numbers in which she'd have to sing a high C, with alternate lower notes when she didn't feel she could do it. There were no high Cs in the score when the show opened on Broadway. The highest note was an A, and there was only one. It does seem to be true that between Boston and New York, a few high notes were added (again, though, the highest note was a single A), but it could also be that Kahn was simply taking lower notes even in Boston. Judy Kaye remembered Kahn telling her that Coleman had said it was OK for her to not sing the high notes after opening night. Kaye found that unlikely as Coleman was “a stickler for getting the music right." She thought that Kahn must have misconstrued something that Coleman had said. |
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