| This compilation of previously released material gathers the best-known tunes sung by women in Andrew Lloyd Webber's repertoire. Do all the singers here count as divas? A surprisingly high number certainly does. A few offer both outsize personality and outsize pipes: Betty Buckley ("Memory"), Patti LuPone ("Buenos Aires"), Barbra Streisand ("As If We Never Said Goodbye"). Some don't have as much name recognition but still offer blistering readings of famous songs (Yvonne Elliman's vintage version of "I Don't Know How to Love Him," from Jesus Christ Superstar). Others go for nuance, like Marti Webb and her lovely "Tell Me on a Sunday" or Barbara Dickson's "Another Suitcase in Another Hall." And then there are the ones who pull through on sheer bravado: Madonna and her vibrato-laden "Don't Cry for Me Argentina," Glenn Close's harsh "With One Look"--both of them making you long for La LuPone. (In which universe Minnie Driver counts as a diva is anybody's guess.) The overall track selection offers a fairly standard overview of Sir Andrew’s career, though it does include Kiri Te Kanawa's "The Heart Is Slow to Learn," from the aborted sequel to Phantom. |
