A Little Night Music

My senior year in High School Mrs. Lorene Ritzel became my choir teacher. I was smitten right away with her beautiful voice and sassy attitude. For Opera Workshop that year she broke from the traditional Gilbert & Sullivan, and introduced us to Stephen Sondheim. My life would never be the same. We performed selected songs from three of his shows: A Little Night Music, Company, and Sweeney Todd. I devoured these shows and went on to study the rest of his repertoire; checking out sheet music and cds over and over again from the Carnegie Mellon University Library, which was just a 20 minute bus ride from my home in Pittsburgh.

I was cast as Anne in A Little Night Music and performed the song "A Weekend in the Country". Our costume designer dressed us all in creams, very similar to the Broadway revival production in 2009 with Bernette Peters. When looking for a video to post I discovered a film version was made in 1977 with Elizabeth Taylor. There are many great actresses who have played the part of Desiree and sang the song "Send in the Clowns"; Patti LuPone, Catherine Zeta-Jones...Judi Dench was especially great.  An fun fact about this show is every song is written in 3/4 time, perfect for waltzing.