“The audience wants the story to continue and you cannot break the spell. Everyone willingly will return to the story. It’s quite a beautiful collective agreement, live theater. So, trust there is an invisible glue between yourself, your audience and your story.”
Asa part of this series, we had the pleasure to interview Melissa Errico.
Melissa Errico is a Tony Award–nominated Broadway star, a celebrated concert and cabaret performer who has brought new elements of story-telling and thematic unity to solo performance, as well as a recording artist specializing in the music of Stephen Sondheim and Michel Legrand. Called by Opera News, “The Maria Callas of the American musical theater”, her passionate and sublime voice moves elegantly between the worlds of theater, jazz, and the Great American Songbook. Beginning her career as one of the celebrated Broadway leading ladies of her generation, she debuted as Cosette in Les Misérables when still only nineteen and then played the role of Eliza in the last Broadway revival of My Fair Lady, while subsequent roles included a legendary Venus in the Nash-Weil One Touch of Venus and Clara in Sondheim’s Passion. Traveling the world to sing in recent years, from Singapore to San Francisco, her concert venues have included New York’s Carnegie Hall, London’s Cadogan Hall, and Le Grand Rex in Paris, where she was the only American invited to sing at the memorial to Legrand. In summer 2023, she also performed a concert in Paris that was broadcast nationally and internationally on Radio France, followed by a sold-out cabaret at the historic Le Bal Blomet. Soon after, she opened for music icon George Benson at the Montreal Jazz Festival, where London Jazz News wrote: “Errico was energized, making sure with every breath that she would get the audience in the 3,000-seater Pelletier really on her side. Every high note was heroically held, and she got a standing ovation… Montreal audiences always want to show their warmth, and this one made her deservedly welcome.” Yet it is Errico’s two acclaimed Sondheim recordings that have best defined her artistry: her 2018 Sondheim Sublime was hailed by The Wall Street Journal as “the best all-Sondheim album ever recorded,” while her second, Sondheim in the City (Concord Theatricals Recordings, 2024) — notably jazz-inflected and featuring drummer Lewis Nash — was praised by The New York Times as “a New York house tour of thrill and heartbreak.” Its release culminated in her sold-out London solo concert-hall debut in July 2025. Over her career, she has also recorded with legendary producers Arif Mardin and Phil Ramone — the latter overseeing her album Legrand Affair, conducted by Michel Legrand himself. Beyond the recording studio, she has appeared in her own PBS television special as part of the acclaimed American Songbook series. Singing often with symphony orchestras across the United States, she was a longtime favorite of Marvin Hamlisch, with whom she frequently appeared in concert. In addition, she has created a role, unique among musical theater artists of her generation, as an author, writing a regular column in the New York Times about the life and misadventures of a ‘girl singer on the road’ called “Scenes from An Acting Life.” Bringing that literary sensibility to the emotion and imagination of classic American music is central to Errico’s newest album I Can Dream, Can’t I? a cycle of voice-and-piano reflections on illusion, memory, and the enduring beauty of the Great American Songbook.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit about your “origin story”. Can you tell us the story of how you grew up?
Ilearned to walk in Washington Square Park — my family raised me and my older brother, Mike (now a professor at NYU’s Clive Davis Institute, seconds from the park) in New York City until I was five years old and we moved to Long Island. My father did his medical school education at Cornell in Manhattan and began his life as a doctor at Hospital For Special Surgery as well as St Francis and North Shore in Manhasset. My sister, now a jewelry designer (and avid skier), was born when I was 11. My grandparents were in Brooklyn, and I was steeped in stories of Italian immigration: my father’s grandfather was a tailor in World War One, and my mother’s father fought in the same war and became a surgeon. My mother’s mother was an opera singer and her sister became a successful Ziegfeld girl, something I was always fascinated by. The family ancestry was rooted in the story of Italians who arrived on Ellis Island. I went from being a little city toddler to living on Long Ridge Road in Plandome, Long Island, about 35 minutes away. In my first year in kindergarten, I met my now-husband who lived in Queens. He was Mike’s best friend through elementary school and we both have minds, and photo albums, full of shared childhood memories like soccer games, swimming pools, hamburger stands, and fairs.
Long Ridge Road was a steep hill, so steep you could send apples down the hill and see which got there faster. We blessedly had an apple tree on the front lawn for supplies. In high school, I played a babysitter on “As The World Turns” and was able to buy a car. I bought a stick shift because I was a feminist and didn’t want to ever be helpless and not be able to use a clutch. Long Ridge became the ultimate test for my driving skills, because if you released the clutch for too long, you’d be moving awfully fast downhill and backward. I always recall that feeling of vertigo when I think of my childhood — the feeling of being perched safely in a little yellow house that was on a precarious slope. It was both comfortable and a little, not unpleasantly, uneasy.
What inspired you to pursue a career in music, and how did your journey begin?
I often tell the same version of this story — still true! — which is that I was struck by inspiration lightening during my 12th birthday trip to see “On Your Toes” on Broadway. There was something in the combination of humor, wit, dance, love, tap, jazz, sex… oh! I was hooked! I cried and cried and my mother consoled me in that way that I, now a mother, might describe it as: the happiest kind of sadness to witness. Facing a child who weeps because something is beautiful.
If I elaborate on this joy, this recognition, even a sense of mission- it was ignited from many angles. My mother is a great beauty which she accented with lipstick and special effects — black eye liner, pointed bras, body shaping cinchers, turtle necks, pencil skirts, shimmering evening gowns. She was a glamourous mix of Marilyn Monroe’s unguardedness and Lauren Bacall’s sly firmness. At heart, she is a funny Brooklyn girl, highly emotional, drawn to fantasy, a deeply artistic painter and sculptor who loves being enveloped in stories. She is very social. She is one half of me. My father is a pianist and slightly more internal, even brooding, perhaps existential. He spent my childhood afternoons hovered over a piano, after long days at the hospital as an orthopedic surgeon, where it seemed his job was stressful, involving emergencies, car accidents, and broken bones. He referred to his profession as “carpentry.” When he wasn’t reassembling people, the piano showed him to be a calm, elegant, poetical, quiet man, playing the sweeping Parisian melodies of Michel Legrand popular from his Vietnam-era days. I became hooked on a kind of romanticism and chemistry between my complex parents, and between my father and melody itself. “The Summer Knows” and “Windmills of Your Mind” were soundtracks of my life. As I get older, I am learning that Vietnam was a deeply troubling chapter for my parents and they suffered badly, often citing “I Will Wait For You,” another classic by Legrand, as their anthem. I think some of my attraction to music is to address these emotions. Their deep well of feelings is a part of me.
My “career” began when my mother signed me up for French Woods camp and I played Evita opposite Jason Robert Brown as Che, among other roles. Yes, I was 13, and made a very determined musical theater fascist. I also got to play all the sexy comedy roles — from Adelaide to Carla in “Nine,” and Hedy La Rue in “How to Succeed.” I was a natural clown.
Can you tell us the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
What a question! I have seen the ghost that haunts the Belasco, I have done a raucous sold-out cabaret at the Bal Blomet in Paris, I have sung “Camelot” with Jeremy Irons to 20,000 people while pregnant… I have genuinely never been bored for a day. I will assume I can answer your question differently every day of my life, but for today I will give you my current favorite: the day I met Sondheim. I was working at The Kennedy Center in a beautiful revival of “Sunday In The Park With George” and I asked him if we could reconstruct the “Color and Light” sequence as a scene in Georges’ atelier with Dot in a bathtub. I felt I knew what a painter’s model might feel, wanting his attention, to get his eyes on me, to love him, to have a night away from the hat. I saw Dot as excited, aroused, confused, vulnerable, desperate, sulky, delightful; kicking bubbles on the lyrics “I’ll be in the follies!” and I needed Steve to adjust a few words to accommodate the shift away from makeup — he added “more soap” and “more scent,” as well as “if my bust were fuller” instead of flatter. Re-writing together, even in these small ways, felt like a confluence of art history and musical theater — it felt like a huge gift. I had spent four years studying art at Yale and I felt we, Steve and I, could sing a Seurat bather. It was utterly thrilling to be given the opportunity to envision it.
It has been said that sometimes our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
I tripped in Les Miz and ruined Jean Valjean’s death scene as the real glasses I carried fell from the tray and shattered just as I was supposed to kneel at his feet and embrace him worriedly as Cosette. Instead, the tender moment became a terrible circus of stage hands, dressed unconvincingly as French peasants, rushing onstage with vacuums to protect me and to protect the ridges in the floor where the set would soon move on tracks. I had made it impossible for the Les Miz set to move. I think what I learned was, first, to be careful. And, upon reflection, that the audience will pause sometimes with you, as human error happens, and that you can restart your story without horror. We are human beings onstage, after all, and a mistake can happen. The audience wants the story to continue and you cannot break the spell. Everyone willingly will return to the story. It’s quite a beautiful collective agreement, live theater. So, trust there is an invisible glue between yourself, your audience and your story.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
I am deeply grateful to Phil Hall, my voice coach. We work sometimes 6–10 hours a week, learning songs, reviewing lyrics and developing my concerts. He wasn’t a part of my early career but in a way, he is the key to how I have maintained my voice. The hardest part about being a concert singer is having enough time to explore the songs before the band rehearsals and the momentum towards opening night accelerates. I want relaxed time to brood with songs, to laugh at the lyrics, to test the songs over and over until the words become second nature. I want to try different keys, and sometimes experiment with some melody variants. (This is not always natural to traditionally musical theater trained singers. I was raised with a bit of the Julie Andrews exactitude, and I have been delighted when a recent critic called me “a cross between Julie Andrews and Julie London.” That’s more like it!)
Phil has a grand piano in his apartment on West End Ave way uptown. I show up with a bright red rolling bag full of music — sometimes all film noir songs, or this summer, all Streisand’s songbook. I always tell him if I win an award, ever, it’s not my award, its ours. He is my voice’s best friend. (Not whining for awards, by the way! My tennis husband always says the best award is being able to play the game.)
What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now?
I am over the moon to make my debut at the Ronnie Scotts Jazz Club in London on July 12. I am singing a show called “The Summer Knows- Melissa Errico Sings Michel Legrand”. I think it is going to feel really good to sing his music in a pure jazz environment, to let the songs be elastic and breathe. Michel loved jazz, and I want to conjure up his joyful spirit. We all need him!
I am also over the moon, and stars, to sing my homage to Streisand at a few brilliant places this summer, including the gorgeous nightclub 54 Below in New York City, the Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor and — the culmination! — Town Hall in Provincetown, aka “Ptown.” I love making music in Ptown and we are going to have a Barbra party!
The very early seeds of my next album are in mind, and I have to keep quiet about that.
We are very interested in diversity in the entertainment industry. Can you share three reasons with our readers about why you think it’s important to have diversity represented in music, film, and television? How can that potentially affect our culture?
Diversity is oxygen. When we hear stories unlike our own, we feel differently, our emotional vocabulary stretches. I see it in my children, how they learn empathy through culture. Empathy is the first reason. I grew up in a family shaped by immigration — Italians arriving on a ship, longing for reinvention. Their stories taught me early that identity is layered, and that art has the power to hold those layers. Secondly, diversity protects against dullness, and stagnation. Art that reflects one point of view becomes decorative. The Great American Songbook itself is a mosaic — immigrant voice, Jewish composers, Black artists, European traditions — all converging into something unmistakably American. That collision has vitality. Thirdly, I think that diversity makes a leading lady or man out of each person. That’s a good thing. When someone sees their life represented with dignity, it creates strength… a permission is given to dream, to create, to belong. I think especially of women’s stories which have so often been narrow and idealized. I have written about how I used to be the pretty “ingenue” who really was never given much interior life at all… and now, I hope to see more stories about the inner lives of women in midlife — mothers, artists, women in transition — that are vast, contradictory and deeply dramatic. Reese Witherspoon seems to be breaking through in this goal, and I love her.
There is so much music waiting to be sung! A culture that includes more voices across heritage, age and experience — sounds richer and fuller. I want the full sound on!
As a successful music star, you’ve likely faced challenges along the way. How do you stay motivated? How do you overcome obstacles in your career?
Motivation for me is less tied to discipline than devotion. I am still that little girl witnessing beauty at the Rodgers and Hart musical. I’m not sure why that feeling doesn’t fade. Maybe it is because (“On Your Toes” star) Christine Andreas’ voice was so beautiful, its unforgettable… and I happen to know her now! She reminds me, each time I see her, of that happy day. Obstacles are inevitable, as she has even shared with me. Voices change, the industry shifts, people misunderstand you, or you misunderstand yourself… I’ve learned not to panic. “The sun will shine again,” was said to me once and that stayed with me, as simple as it sounds. I trust that something is quietly reorganizing beneath the surface. Writing also opened up another avenue for me of organizing my experiences. Writing essays, writing concerts — one of my friends said to me “you can write yourself out of a hole.” And its kind of true! Very practically, I keep working. I make a new show, learn new songs, call my collaborators. Motion creates clarity — we certainly can’t always wait for the clarity! I have grown less afraid of the audience wanting something perfect from me; they don’t, actually. They want an artist to be alive. I have a family I am looking after, parents who need me and a best friend who has metastatic cancer. My obstacles are nothing.