Bowl’s Broadway Tribute Unleashes Vocal Powerhouses

Put well-known and successful singers on a stage together and some sort of dueling-divas situation usually arises. Not this week, when John Mauceri and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra hosted “One Hundred Years of Broadway” at the outdoor amphitheater on Friday and Saturday nights.

This despite the fact that the vocal attractions were--in alphabetical order, of course--Justino Diaz, Susan Egan, Davis Gaines and Marilyn Horne--heavy hitters all. Together and separately, the quartet, the orchestra, conductor Mauceri and a choral assemblage, the Mitch Hanlon Singers, surveyed the American musical theater, from Victor Herbert’s “Naughty Marietta” through Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Cats” with high energy but no upstaging or competitive strategies.

It was a generous, brightly performed and nicely paced program, as integrated as any anthology-agenda can be. The singers contributed two items apiece to the first half; after intermission, an abbreviated version of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “South Pacific” plus a quickie finale in Gershwin’s “Strike Up the Band,” with loud and brilliant fireworks, entertained the large, Friday-night crowd.

Each of the soloists cannily chose viable showpieces. Horne’s “Bewitched” (from “Pal Joey”) and “The Man I Love” proved most memorable, through transparent word projection and a handsome tone under full control, and Gaines made the hoary cliches of the “Carousel” Soliloquy and the even-more-cliched sentiments of “Ol’ Man River” not only palatable but newly minted.

Both Horne and Gaines also gave pointedly characterized and richly sung performances in the “South Pacific” scenes.

Baritone Diaz didn’t really warm up until the second half, when he brought genuine authority and solid vocalism to his Emile de Becque of “South Pacific.” His Nellie Forbush, young Susan Egan, contributed lilt and ebullience to the overfamiliar Rodgers score; earlier, she showed great versatility and dramatic resources in excerpts from “Cats” and “Company”--wherein she breezily took all three parts in “Getting Married Today.”

Overmiked and underblended, the Mitch Hanlon Singers seemed chorally challenged by its chores in “South Pacific.” Under the circumstances, it was just as well the group had so little to do.

Mauceri and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, now in their ninth season at the outdoor showplace, supported the singers deftly and contributed strong performances of their own in the overtures to “Naughty Marietta” and “My Fair Lady” and in “Strike Up the Band,” which, unfortunately, one could barely hear amid the noisy fireworks.

At midprogram, the orchestra also gave the world premiere of three songs from the uncompleted musical “The Light in the Piazza,” due for production in 2000. Its composer is the gifted, multi-prize-winning Adam Guettel, whose previous work includes “Floyd Collins.” He is the son of Mary Rodgers and the grandson of Richard Rodgers.

These previews proved exceptionally pleasant and tuneful, but hardly conclusive. As Mauceri said to the audience, “We can’t offer you any more of this score, because it’s not written yet.” In any case, this was a promising look into the future of Broadway.