Mary Saunders-Barton

In May 2005, the month I was awarded tenure at Penn State, my husband and I attended a performance of Adam Guettel's newly opened musical The Light In The Piazza at Lincoln Center's Vivien Beaumont Theatre. I can think of no more appropriate volume I might choose for the library on the occasion of my tenure than the score of this superb musical. My mission at Penn State is to prepare young singing actors to meet the ever more challenging demands of exciting new musicals. The Light In The Piazza requires brilliant vocalism of a kind specific to musical theatre singing. A score of this calibre written for musical theatre advances the growing understanding among our classical counterparts that modern musical theatre is developing its own aesthetic which can be welcomed as an exciting new dimension of the art of singing.