If Stephanie Blythe needed to expunge all those bloody deeds she helped commit so vividly as Mrs. Lovett in the San Francisco Opera’s recent Sweeney Todd, she couldn’t have chosen a more purifying musical source to tap than Kate Smith. The upbeat tunes the great American songbird sang are like a stroll in a sunlit, buttercup-filled meadow after the mezzo soprano’s walk on London’s dark streets in Stephen Sondheim’s demonic musical.
Projecting abundant good cheer, a deeply informed fascination with her subject, and a brimming musicality, Blythe opened the Bay Area Cabaret’s 12th season October 4 at the Fairmont Hotel’s Venetian Room. A full house, including her Sweeney co-star Brian Mulligan, was with her all the way, right through a singalong climax to “God Bless America” that closed the 80-minute evening.
In tone, temperament and execution there was none of the awkward street-crossing that sometimes plagues an opera singer’s foray into the popular realm. Blythe, who has performed We’ll Meet Again: the Songs of Kate Smith more than two dozen times over the years, peppered her stirring, radio-ready, powerhouse singing with lots of informative chat. Among the jaw-dropping details she shared were these:
- Smith (1907-86) didn’t speak a word until she was three.
- More or less an immediate sensation once she started performing, she took on Amos ‘n’ Andy and beat that hit radio show in the ratings.
- She introduced some 2,200 songs in her career, sold $600 million worth of U.S. war bonds during World War II, and performed with, among others, Dean Martin, Cher, Tina Turner, and Donny and Marie Osmond.
As reverent an admirer of Smith’s talent and accomplishments as she may be, Blythe is no fawning acolyte. Referring to her predecessor as “a chubby girl from Washington, D.C.,” Blythe got some laughs out of the first role Smith played: “Tiny Little.” She also acknowledged her own plus-size form, making it a point of identification with Smith. There’s more than a little facial resemblance. Blythe, who has more acting flair and theatrical timing than Smith did, could certainly play her in a stage or film bio.
The principal pleasures of We’ll Meet Again were vocal, as Blythe and her accompanist Craig Terry re-animated everything from an early hit (“The Continental”) to “The White Cliffs of Dover” to “When You Wish Upon a Star,” from the Disney film Pinocchio. Time and again, she brought something striking to the cause, using her mighty but supple tone in the most discerning ways.
In “The Continental,” she turned the “m” sound in “rhythm” into a resonant hum. Her mastery of dynamics and expressive phrasing launched a swarming, high-volume flock of bluebirds over songwriter Vera Lynn’s “White Cliffs,” then made the listener feel as if she were meditating on a single sun-struck bird in a pianissimo echo later on.
After telling a black-comic bar-room brawl story about composer Harry Woods, Blythe brought a solar-scale amplitude to his “Here Comes the Sun.” She lavished a steady soft gleam on the vowel sounds in “When You Wish. ” Even “God Bless America” felt freshly minted here, as something more prayerful on the first verses than reflexive, stand-and-deliver anthem. Blythe may be the singer Kate Smith might have aspired to be – every bit as potent and personally likable, but more skilled, more in control of her instrument.
Smith, as Blythe noted, was a natural talent who never took a voice lesson. While she wasn’t making an explicit comparison with herself, the listener couldn’t help filling one in. Blythe may be the singer Kate Smith might have aspired to be – every bit as potent and personally likable, but more skilled, more in control of her instrument, able to make things happen in song, a lyric, even a single note that were simply beyond Smith’s technical reach.
Gratifying as it was, Blythe’s show has an intrinsic limitation. The relentlessly positive songs that Smith sang do begin to register as similar after a while. The emotional meter is set to high-wattage bright and only intermittently flickers into anything moody or reflective. Smith, as Blythe said, did not like to look backwards. It made her the polar opposite of a torch singer mulling past loves and losses.
There were moments during the Venetian Room show when the cheerfulness began to feel almost military, with Terry’s sometimes over-the-top piano playing selling it all harder than strictly necessary. Even the amplification of the show was a bit much. Blythe’s pipes just aren’t fitted for intimate, husky confidences whispered into a microphone.
It was a night to bask in the full sun of Blythe doing Smith to a turn. We’ll Meet Again radiated a happy meeting of singer and material, of past greatness and present-day, full-bodied tribute. Blythe made her way out of town on a full contact high.