Soprano, Broadway legend
NEW YORK — Barbara Cook, whose shimmering soprano made her one of Broadway’s leading ingenues and later amajor cabaret and concert interpreter of popular American song, has died. She was 89.
Ms. Cook died early Tuesday of respiratory failure at her home in Manhattan, surrounded by family and friends, according to publicist Amanda Kaus. Her last meal was vanilla ice cream, a nod to one of her most famous roles in “She Loves Me.”
Throughout her nearly six decades on stage, Ms. Cook’s voice remained remarkably supple, gaining in emotional honesty and expanding on its natural ability to go straight to the heart.
On social media, powerhouse singers paid their respects, including Betty Buckley, who called Ms. Cook “one of the great artists & lovely being,” and Lea Salonga, who wrote “Rest In Peace” on Twitter. New Tony Award winner Ben Platt from “Dear Evan Hansen” wrote: “Thank you Barbara Cook for the beautiful songs, the indelible characters, and the masterful storytelling. Heaven must sound glorious today.”
On Broadway, Ms. Cook was best known for three roles: her portrayal of the saucy Cunegonde in Leonard Bernstein’s “Candide” ( 1956); librarian Marian opposite Robert Preston in “The Music Man” ( 1957); and Amalia Balash, the letterwriting heroine of “She LovesMe” ( 1963).
Yet when Ms. Cook’s pert ingenue days were over, she found a second, longer career in clubs and concert halls, working for more than 30 years with Wally Harper, a pianist and music arranger. Harper helped in shaping her material, choosing songs and providing the framework for her shows.
To celebrate her 80th birthday, she appeared with the New York Philharmonic in two concerts inNovember 2007 and then had a similar birthday salute in London. In 2011, she was saluted at the Kennedy Center Honors and remained a singer even in her 80s.
Born in Atlanta in 1927, Ms. Cook always hated vocal exercises, never had a vocal coach and had an effortless skill of creating beauty by just opening her mouth. “I don’t remember when I didn’t sing. I just always sang,” she said in 2011. “I think I breathed and I sang.”
Her father was a traveling salesman who sold hats; her mother worked for Southern Bell. Her baby sister died of pneumonia when she was 3, and her father left when she was 6. She was raised by her far- too- clingy mother, who blamed young Barbara for both the death and the abandonment.
Ms. Cook made her Broadway debut in “Flahooley” ( 1951), a short- lived musical fantasy about a mass- produced laughing doll. The showbecame a cult classic for musical- theater buffs, primarily because it was recorded, keeping its memory alive long after the production closed.
Ms. Cook then appeared in a pair of Rodgers and Hammerstein classics, playing Ado Annie in a City Center revival of “Oklahoma!” and then on tour in 1953. She followed that by portraying Carrie Pipperidge in a 1954 revival of “Carousel.” It led to Ms. Cook’s first original musical success, a yearlong Broadway run in “Plain and Fancy” ( 1955) in which she portrayed an innocent, unworldly Amish girl.
The following year, she starred in “Candide,” which ran only 73 performances but later became a staple of opera houses around the world.
Meredith Willson’s “The Music Man” was Ms. Cook’s biggest Broadway hit, opening in December 1957 and running for more than 1,300 performances. She won a TonyAward for her portrayal of the prim librarian who realizes Professor Harold Hill ( Preston) is a con man selling band instruments and uniforms to the gullible residents of a small Iowa town.
Ms. Cook turned to solo shows after her Broadway career withered in the late 1960s as she battled alcoholism and weight gain. In her 2016 memoir “Then & Now,” Ms. Cook describes hitting rock bottom as a drunk: “I was so broke that I was stealing food from the supermarket by slipping sandwich meat in my coat pocket.”
But she gave up drinking in the 1970s and, with the help of Harper, reinvented herself as a solo artist, working in small New York clubs and finally Carnegie Hall. Her first concert album, “Barbara Cook at Carnegie Hall” ( 1975), became a classic.
Her marriage to acting teacher David LeGrant ended in divorce. Ms. Cook is survived by a son, Adam LeGrant.
When asked what her advice usually was to aspiring singers, she told The AP it boiled down to three words that she learned early on herself and have been her guide.
“You are enough. You are always enough. You don’t ever have to pretend to be anything other than what you are. All you have to do is deeply embrace who you are, and you’ll be fine,” she said. “In life, aren’t you drawn to the more authentic people? Of course. You’re not drawn to phonies.”