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Barbara
Cook is the current reigning master of the art of the
American Popular Song. She first made her mark in the cult
favorite Flahooley, but really burst upon the scene singing the
fiendishly difficult "Glitter and Be Gay" as Cunegonde in
Leonard Bernstein's operetta Candide. She went on from
there to create the role of Marian the Librarian in Meredith Wilson's The
Music Man, opposite the legendary Robert Preston. From there,
she created the role of Amalia Balash in Bock & Harnick's touching
and endearing She Loves Me, and then essentially went into
one warmly remembered flop after another (The Gay Life, The Grass
Harp, Something More!) until she ultimately retired
to specialize in concert appearances (such as her triumph in Sondheim's Follies
with the New York Philharmonic) and one woman shows at venues as varied
as the Carlyle Club and Carnegie Hall. She reinvented herself with
her dearly loved and recently departed musical director and accompanist
Wally Harper, presenting such hit one-woman shows as Mostly Sondheim,
The Champion Years, and Barbara Cook's Broadway.
Incidentally, her one return to the musical stage was in the Royal
Shakespeare Company's ill-fated first staging of the infamous musical
version of Stephen King's Carrie, where she sang an ethereal
Mrs. White. |
