Broadway icon Idina Menzel has a wicked streak.<\/p>\n
Last April, her husband, singer-actor Taye Diggs, performed in Prelude, the 250-seat restaurant at Adrienne Arsht Center. Saturday night, Menzel sings at the Arsht Center\u2019s 2,400-seat Knight Concert Hall.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always have to outdo him,\u201d she says, gleefully.<\/p>\n
Menzel, 40, has had a charmed career: originating the role of Maureen in Rent (1996); a 2004 Best Actress Tony for the musical Wicked (Broadway\u2019s original bad witch Elphaba); a recurring role in the current hit TV series Glee.<\/p>\n
A onetime bar mitzvah singer from Syosset, N.Y., Menzel performs in concert at the Arsht with the Miami Symphonic Studio Orchestra. It\u2019s the final show in an 18-month tour that two weeks ago was recorded in Toronto for a PBS special.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt feels like the culmination of a stage of my career in which I really learned a lot,\u201d Menzel says. \u201cI love standing in front of these dynamic orchestras. . . . I\u2019m a woman with many hats. I like it that way. It balances me out as an artist. The grind of eight shows a week, a play or musical, that\u2019s where my heart is. It keeps me fresh.\u201d<\/p>\n
Menzel figures she played about 1,000 performances of Wicked, belting her trademark Act 1 closer, Defying Gravity. She promises to sing it in Miami. \u201cWhen I\u2019m in concert, it would be pretty crappy if I didn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the tour ends, she\u2019ll spend time in Los Angeles with Diggs and their 2-year-old son, Walker. Later, she\u2019ll head back to New York for development of a new stage project.
\nMenzel says it makes no difference to her whether she\u2019s singing in concert or as a character in a book musical.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhatever nerves I have will be the same for both,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Despite thousands of acclaimed live performances on Broadway and across the United States, it\u2019s Glee that has made Menzel\u2019s face famous for millions of TV viewers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got recognized in this coffee shop twice in Pasadena. That never used to happen,\u201d says Menzel, who plays former Vocal Adrenaline coach Shelby Corcoran. \u201cThey don\u2019t say I loved you in Glee, but I loved you in Rent or Wicked. Ever since Glee, I get more compliments about other jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Broadway icon Idina Menzel has a wicked streak. Last April, her husband, singer-actor Taye Diggs, performed in Prelude, the 250-seat restaurant at Adrienne Arsht Center. Saturday night, Menzel sings at the Arsht Center\u2019s 2,400-seat Knight Concert Hall. \u201cI always have to outdo him,\u201d she says, gleefully. Menzel, 40, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":94,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[33,12],"class_list":["post-93","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","tag-33","tag-barefoot-at-the-symphony"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/2011_11_30.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Srnq-1v","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":321,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93\/revisions\/321"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}