Why is it sopranos so often give the impression — perhaps the better they are — that they're more suited to concert stages than to cabaret podiums, whereas mezzos are likely to seem right at home in boites? I don't have the answer to the question that crosses my mind often and crossed it again when Margaret Preece took a night off from her assignment as the Mother Abbess in the current London production of The Sound of Music to sing Richard Rodgers songs at the Metropolitan Room.
It isn't that the attractively pert Preece looked and sounded entirely out of place. She didn't. But with her big voice, she also sounded as if the intimacy that microphones underline in such surroundings was something for which she had no need. Had she been supplied no mike whatsoever, she could have filled the space and had volume to spare. Indeed, she probably could have stood at one end of the street and been heard at the other end. Nevertheless, though Preece might ultimately be more at home on a concert stage, she delivered the goods here.
Declaring herself a longtime Rodgers lover, she divided her list of his songs more or less equally between the Lorenz Hart numbers and the Oscar Hammerstein II numbers. Given the silvery soprano, she had a natural affinity for the more romantic items. "No Other Love" and "Out of My Dreams" (both by Hammerstein), as well as "My Heart Stood Still," "Where or When," and the ballad that lent its name to the program (all three by Hart) were given crystalline readings. This wasn't surprising from someone who bears a strong resemblance to superb R&H interpreter Julie Andrews.
Because Preece has plenty of spunk, she was able to bring off "The Lady Is a Tramp" (Hart) and "I Enjoy Being a Girl" (Hammerstein) well enough, although neither song felt like an absolute fit. One reason they worked as well as they did is because Preece's insistence that she holds Rodgers and his superlative partners in high regard rang true. She was singing music she holds close, and that's always a great place to start and finish. And she finished the act proper with the Abbess' "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" (Hammerstein) — for which she certainly required no amplification — then completed the act altogether by encoring on the rapturous Rodgers and Hart waltz "Falling in Love With Love."
Listening to her — and to Michael Larsen giving his all and more at the piano — I thought of what a stickler Rodgers was about his tunes. He liked them sung precisely as he'd written them. Precisely as Rodgers wrote them is precisely how Preece sang them. Rodgers would have loved her — and might have even made a pass, notorious womanizer that he was. He'd probably have loved as well the "Isn't It Romantic?" CD Preece is just releasing.
Lyric note: In "If I Loved You," Preece sang the phrase "Off you would go in the midst of day," but the just-released Complete Lyrics of Oscar Hammerstein II (Knopf) confirms the line is "Off you would go in the mist of day."
Presented by and at the Metropolitan Room,
34 W. 22nd St., NYC.
Dec. 10.