Patti LuPone - The Lady with the Torch

[IMG:R]Ghostlight Records
Now Available

On The Lady with the Torch, a Ghostlight Records release, actress and stage diva Patti LuPone sings 14 torch songs. The CD comprises part of a concert conceived for her by Scott Wittman, orchestrated (mostly) by Jonathan Tunick, with the nine-piece band conducted and joined on piano by Chris Fenwick. At 48½ minutes, this disc may be considered ungenerous, given LuPone's talent. Given her mannerisms, it may be enough.

What is a torch song? The rather spartan booklet—six pictures (three full-page) of Ms. LuPone and very little helpful text—contains the singer's interesting speculations on the derivation of the term "torch song," something the dictionaries curiously fail to provide. Patti wonders: Is "carrying a torch" keeping your window lighted for the errant lover? Is it the burning in your heart for the rover? Or a reference, as she puts it, to "the thing you use to set the creep's house on fire after he dumps you"? That last is the Patti we know and relish: the tough broad talking out of the corner of her hardboiled mouth. She concludes that, for her, torch is short for torture by pain and sorrow from loss and loneliness.

True enough in its unscientific way. But consider that torture is a two-way street. It can be masochistic, referring to the singer, or sadistic, referring to the listener. LuPone's singing, though stylish and showy, is not easy listening; her mannerisms, although not uncharacteristic of torch singers, sometimes have a way of making decoding the words an onerous task.

What are these torch-singer mannerisms, pleasing to some, irritating to others? They involve singing duskily, muskily, huskily, with flagrant throatiness-near-sticking in the singer's craw, bedeviling the hearer's ear. Vowels tend to become diphthongs; final consonants, delayed, even slurred. Lots of rubato, tremolo, melisma, rallentando, idiosyncratic pauses. A wheedling, little-girl voice suddenly turning aggressive. The pleading sob yielding to belted-out reproach. We are to get the clearest possible sense of unrequited or lost love. And perhaps, unintentionally, of the good reason for the woman's abandonment.

I have often admired LuPone onstage, most notably in the current revival of Sweeney Todd. But sorrow doesn't come easy to her; she is better at grievance than at grieving. Nevertheless, her fans should not be deterred, and there are moments on this CD when LuPone sounds natural enough even for non-fans.

The program includes such standards as "The Man I Love," "Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out to Dry," "So in Love" (the masochist anthem), "My Buddy" and "Body and Soul,." But also lesser-known items, some of which are real finds, others that could safely be known even less.

The band plays persuasively both the twelve Tunick-orchestrated numbers, and the two Dick Gallagher-arranged ones; one of the latter, "My Buddy," featuring a memorable flugelhorn solo by Glenn Drewes. It would help, though, if instead of LuPone's laconic and rather snide comments, we were given something about provenance, context, perhaps even history.

Scott Wittman does provide a usage note: "Open a good bottle of red wine, turn off all the lights and put on Patti." I'm not sure "you'll feel," as he avers, "like a million bucks in no time"; but you may feel like a few bucks more than the cost of the record.