Idina Menzel

Posted on: June 17th, 2015 by admin No Comments

Idina Menzel

Playing Red Rocks August 11

We are going to see Idina Menzel, the American actress and singer. She rose to prominence when she originated the role of Maureen Johnson in the Broadway musical Rent, a role which she reprised for the 2005 feature film adaptation of the musical. She received a Tony Award nomination in 1996 for her performance in Rent. In 2004, she won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for originating the role of Elphabain the Broadway musical Wicked. Menzel made her return to Broadway in the 2014 original musical If/Then, which earned her a nomination for the 2014 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical. She was then honored with the Breakthrough Artist award at the 2014 Billboard Women in Music awards ceremony. Menzel is also known for her recurring role of Shelby Corcoran on the Fox musical comedy-drama TV series Glee. This role led to a revival in Menzel's career as her name gained more recognition, leading to a two-year tour and more acting roles. These included the 2007 Disney film Enchanted which she played the role of Nancy and as the voice of Elsa in Frozen. Holiday Wishes (2014), her first album in six years, reached number 6 on the Billboard 200 albums chart. Menzel is the only competitive Tony Award-winning actress to ever reach the top 10. Menzel recently announced that she will be embarking on a world tour in 2015. Menzel's birthplace is varyingly reported as either Queens or Syosset, New York.She grew up in Syosset, the daughter of Helene, a therapist, and Stuart Mentzel, a pajama salesman. She has a younger sister named Cara. Menzel's family is Jewish, and her grandparents emigrated from Russia and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. When Menzel was 15 years old, her parents divorced and she began working as a wedding and bar mitzvah singer, a job which she continued throughout her time at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. Menzel, however, did not celebrate a bat mitzvah after she quit Hebrew school. Menzel attended Syosset High School. She changed the spelling of her surname to Menzel to better reflect the pronunciation the Mentzel family had adopted in America. She was friends with actor Adam Pascal before they worked together in Rent. In 1995, Menzel auditioned for Rent, which became her first professional theatre job and her Broadway debut. Rent opened off-Broadway at the New York Theatre Workshop on January 26, 1996, but it moved to Broadway's Nederlander Theatre due to its popularity. For her performance as Maureen Johnson in the original cast of the musical, Menzel received a Tony nomination as Best Featured Actress in a Musical losing to Ann Duquesnay for Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk. Her final performance in the musical was on July 1, 1997. Following the success of Rent, Menzel released her first solo album entitled Still I Can't Be Still on Hollywood Records, Menzel also originated the role of Dorothy in Summer of '42 at Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut, starred as Sheila in the New York City Center Encores! production of Hair and appeared on Broadway as Amneris in Aida. Menzel earned a Drama Desk Award nomination for her performance as Kate in the Manhattan Theatre Club's 2000 off-Broadway production of Andrew Lippa's The Wild Party. Her other off-Broadway credits include the pre-Broadway run of Rent and The Vagina Monologues. In 2003, Menzel starred with actress and singer Kristin Chenoweth on Broadway in Wicked, a musical by Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman based upon Gregory Maguire's novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West(1995). Menzel received the 2004 Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical for her portrayal of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West. During her penultimate performance of Wicked on January 8, 2005, she fell through a trap door and cracked a lower rib. The injury prevented her from performing in her final show on January 9. Menzel did, however, make a special out-of-costume appearance at that performance, performed her final song, and received a five-minute standing ovation. Menzel was replaced by Elphaba standby Shoshana Bean. Following Wicked, Menzel appeared off-Broadway in the Public Theater's production of See What I Wanna See, a Michael John LaChiusa-penned musical whose run ended in December 2005, for which she received Drama Desk Award and Drama League Award nominations. She reprised her Tony Award-winning role as Elphaba in the West End production of Wicked when it opened at London's Apollo Victoria Theatre on September 7, 2006. During her run, she was the highest-paid female performer in the West End at $30,000 per week. Menzel finished her West End run on December 30, 2006. She was succeeded by Elphaba standby Kerry Ellis. Menzel played the role of Florence in the 21st-anniversary concert of Chess at the Royal Albert Hall, London from May 12 to 13, 2008, alongside Kerry Ellis, Adam Pascal and Josh Groban. In 2008, Menzel headlined the Powerhouse Theatre's reading of Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik's musical Nero from July 11 to 13, performing the role of Nero's mistress, Poppea. She was joined by Glee costar Lea Michele as Claudia Octavia, Jeffrey Carleson as Nero, and Michael Arden as Octavia's brother, Brittanicus. On February 28, 2013, it was announced that Menzel would make her return to the Broadway stage, starring as Elizabeth in the new Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey musical If/Then. The new musical, directed by Michael Greif (whom Menzel previously worked with in the original production of Rent), had its world premiere at the National Theatre in Washington, D.C., starting with previews on November 5, 2013, till November 24, 2013. Following the out-of-town tryout, the show moved to the Richard Rodgers Theatre on Broadway and began previews on March 4, 2014. It officially opened on March 30, 2014. For her performance, Menzel was nominated for her second Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical. Will be amazing performance to see!

Idina Menzel

Idina Menzel

Playing Red Rocks August 11

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