A Valentine to love songs, Patti LuPone’s 25th Anniversary Tour of Matters of the Heart felt deeply personal. With a voice that could be described as operatic steel wrapped in cabaret intimacy, she delivered a set of 25 songs that traversed the romantic landscape of popular music. With a career spanning five decades, she continues to bewitch audiences with her vocal prowess, theatrical command, and her ability to land the big musical moments with thrilling precision. Her concert last night at the LA Opera, was just that.
A graduate of The Juilliard School’s first Drama Division, LuPone began her professional career with The Acting Company before achieving international recognition as Eva Perón in Evita. Her performance earned the 1980 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical and established her as one of the leading dramatic voices of her generation.
She continued to build a distinguished stage career with major roles in productions including Les Misérables (Fantine, West End), Anything Goes (Reno Sweeney), and Sweeney Todd (Mrs. Lovett). In 2008, she won her second Tony Award for her portrayal of Rose in the Broadway revival of Gypsy, a performance widely regarded as definitive. She received a third Tony Award in 2022 for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for her role as Joanne in the revival of Company.
In her performance at LA Opera, she took a deep dive into both familiar standards and more intimate selections — songs that felt as though they might have been sung at home long before they were sung onstage. One would have to be of a certain age to recognize that “My Father” was written by Judy Collins in 1968, or that “The Last Time I Saw Richard” was penned by Joni Mitchell for the album Blue.
She moved seamlessly from song to song, inhabiting the quietest of moments before returning to Broadway standards like “Not a Day Goes By” and “Being Alive.” Along the way, there were unexpected detours into popular music, including her rendition of Brian Wilson’s “God Only Knows” and “Easy to Be Hard” from the musical Hair.
She is, without a doubt, a star with an innate ability to deliver a song. Her presence and voice demand attention, so it was particularly charming when she forgot a lyric and turned to the audience with a smile: “I’m human after all.”
Famous for once stopping a performance to snatch a phone from an audience member photographing during the show, she turned the story into self-aware comedy. In a moment of playful turnabout, she ended the evening by taking the stage with a camera in hand and photographing the audience — a wink at the legend and a reminder that even divas enjoy the joke.
