Miracle
The human voice is a miracle. Especially when it's the voice of Audra McDonald. Opera News said in 1999:
Anyone who's been paying attention will have noticed that the line between opera and musical theater has been blurred in recent years — and one of the big reasons is Audra McDonald. A Juilliard-trained artist, McDonald has avoided the generic, bee-up-the-nose stridency that has become the standard for a whole generation of Broadway performers. She doesn't just sing, she sings, in the most profound sense of the word.
Tonight she was with Ted Sperling at Zankel Hall. (Going to a concert there is like sitting in a large, friendly picnic basket; wicker and wood on the walls, smooth wooden surfaces around you, clear blue lights.) She's someone who talks to the audience, makes us laugh, and then sings so fully that it's hard to take in. It's wonderful to hear.
This particular concert was done under pressure — the commissioned composer buckled and couldn't finish on time, so Audra and Ted called seven composers and asked them each to pick a sin and write about it. Some of the songs were hugely successful (”Vanity” and “Sloth” brought down the house) and some were less so (”Envy” was a little self-righteous). All of them were produced in about six weeks.
The challenge: take the next six weeks and produce a miracle, and put it across in a miraculous way.