ON THIS DATE
Sweeney encounters the world when so much has been taken from him. It’s what he brings to it instinctively, full-throatedly.”
Six years ago, Groban made his Broadway debut in a head-turning production that suggested an artist who could zig when the world expected him to zag. In “Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812,” a musical directed by Rachel Chavkin and adapted by composer Dave Malloy from “War and Peace,” Groban played lumpy, taciturn Pierre in a padded costume and sang the plaintive “Dust and Ashes.” It earned him a Tony nomination and the gratifying
In 1559, England’s Queen Elizabeth I was crowned in Westminster Abbey.
In 1892, the original rules of basketball, devised by James Naismith, were published for the first time in Springfield, Massachusetts, where the game originated.
In 1919, in Boston, a tank containing an estimated 2.3 million gallons of molasses burst, sending the dark syrup coursing through the city’s North End, killing 21 people.
In 1929, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was born in Atlanta.
In 1943, work was completed on the Pentagon, headquarters of the U.S. Department of War (now Defense).
In 1967, the Green Bay Packers of the NFL defeated the Kansas City Chiefs of the AFL 35-10 in Super Bowl I.
In 1973, President Richard Nixon announced the suspension of all U.S. offensive action in North Vietnam, citing progress in peace negotiations.
— ASSOCIATED PRESS feeling of being accepted into an ensemble.
“I was very spoiled by the ‘Great Comet’ experience, because it started so organically,” he says, sitting in the Lunt-Fontanne. Groban had seen the musical in its original, off-Broadway incarnation, loved it and decided to try to make something happen. “I reached out at the exact same time they reached out, and it was like, ‘Oh, he’s interested. Well, we were just going to ask him anyway.’ And I went out and got, you know, three pints with Dave and Rachel. And we talked about the role and it was like, let’s workshop it, and then it just happened naturally.”