Alexander Gemignani | |
|---|---|
 Gemignani in May 2018 | |
| Born | 3 July 1979 New Jersey |
| Occupation(s) | Actor, musician, conductor |
| Years active | 2000-present |
Alexander Cesare Gemignani (born July 3, 1979) is a Broadway actor, tenor, musician, and conductor. He was nominated for a Tony Award for his performance in Carousel and a Drama Desk Award for his performance in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
Gemignani is the son of Broadway musical director Paul Gemignani and soprano Carolann Page. He was raised in Tenafly, New Jersey and graduated from Tenafly High School in 1997. [1] He is a graduate of the University of Michigan's Musical Theater Department.
Gemignani was married in August 2008 to actor/director Erin Ortman.
Gemignani is known for his roles in Broadway musicals, including Assassins , Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street , Les Misérables, Sunday in the Park with George , and Carousel , receiving a Tony Award nomination for the latter. His film and television credits include The Producers , The Good Wife , Homeland , Chicago Fire, Empire , and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (recurring as Janusz, the eventual husband of the Weissmans’ maid, Zelda). [2]
Gemignani participated in a memorable performance of "Opening Doors" from Merrily We Roll Along at Symphony Space's Wall to Wall Sondheim event celebrating Stephen Sondheim's 75th birthday in March 2005. He also performed in three gala concerts honoring Sondheim's 80th birthday in 2010: with the New York Philharmonic at Avery Fisher Hall, singing "Something's Coming" from West Side Story in March; then at New York City Center in April; [3] and with The New York Pops at Carnegie Hall in November. He performed "Buddy's Blues" from Follies in the online 90th birthday celebration Take Me To The World on April 26, 2020. He made his conducting debut with the New York Philharmonic in Live from Lincoln Center 's New Year's Eve: Celebrating Sondheim on December 31, 2019. [4]
Recently, Gemignani has begun to work as a music director, following in his father's footsteps. He served as the conductor, music director, and music supervisor for the 2020 revival of West Side Story, and has developed pieces for the Public Theatre and the Roundabout Theatre Company. [5] [6] He served as music director and orchestrator for the Fiasco Theatre production of Merrily We Roll Along. [7] He is the artistic director of both the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's National Music Theater Conference as well as the American Music Theatre Project at Northwestern University. He is also an educator and is an associate professor at Northwestern University.
Stephen Joshua Sondheim was an American composer and lyricist. Regarded as one of the most important figures in 20th-century musical theater, he is credited with reinventing the American musical. With his frequent collaborations with Harold Prince and James Lapine, Sondheim's Broadway musicals tackled unexpected themes that ranged beyond the genre's traditional subjects, while addressing darker elements of the human experience. His music and lyrics were tinged with complexity, sophistication, and ambivalence about various aspects of life.
Sweeney Todd is a fictional character who first appeared as the villain of the penny dreadful serial The String of Pearls (1846–1847). The original tale became a feature of 19th-century melodrama and London legend. A barber from Fleet Street, Todd murders his customers with a straight razor and gives their corpses to Mrs. Lovett, his partner in crime, who bakes their flesh into meat pies. The tale has been retold many times since in various media.
John Weidman is an American librettist and television writer for Sesame Street. He has worked on stage musicals with Stephen Sondheim and Susan Stroman.
George Hearn is an American actor and bass-baritone singer, primarily in Broadway musical theatre.
Walter Francis Kerr was an American writer and Broadway theatre critic. He also was the writer, lyricist, and/or director of several Broadway plays and musicals as well as the author of several books, generally on the subject of theater and cinema.
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is a 1979 musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by Hugh Wheeler. It is based on the 1970 play Sweeney Todd by Christopher Bond. The character of Sweeney Todd first appeared in a Victorian penny dreadful titled The String of Pearls.
Michael Cerveris is an American actor, singer, and guitarist. He has performed in many stage musicals and plays, including several Stephen Sondheim musicals: Assassins, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Sunday in the Park with George, Road Show, and Passion. In 2004, Cerveris won the Tony Award as Best Featured Actor in a Musical for Assassins as John Wilkes Booth. In 2015, he won his second Tony Award as Best Actor in a Musical for Fun Home as Bruce Bechdel.
Tobias Ragg is a fictional character who appears in various adaptations of the story Sweeney Todd. The character is an apprentice to the abusive barber Pirelli until Pirelli is murdered by Todd. Toby proceeds to stay with Todd and Mrs. Lovett, helping the latter out in her meat pie shop. Later, Tobias discovers that they have a joint venture to cook the men Todd shaves into meat pies. He ultimately kills Todd after Todd kills Lovett and Lucy Barker, along with multiple others.
John Doyle is a Scottish stage director of musicals and plays, as well as operas. He served as artistic director at several regional theatres in the United Kingdom, where he staged more than 200 professional productions during his career spanning over 40 years.
Lonny Price is an American director, actor, and writer, primarily in theatre. He is best known for his New York directing work, including Sunset Boulevard, Sweeney Todd, Company, and Sondheim! The Birthday Concert. As an actor, he is perhaps best known for his creation of the role of Charley Kringas in the Broadway musical Merrily We Roll Along, Neil Kellerman in Dirty Dancing, and Ronnie Crawford in The Muppets Take Manhattan.
Larry Fuller is an American choreographer, theatre director, dancer, and actor. Both a Tony Award and Drama Desk Award nominated choreographer, he best known for his work on Broadway where he notably staged the movement for the original productions of on On the Twentieth Century (1978), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1979), Evita (1979), Merrily We Roll Along (1981), Is There Life After High School? (1982), and A Doll's Life (1982).
Norm Lewis is an American actor and baritone singer. He has appeared on Broadway, in the West End, film, television, recordings and regional theatre. He’s also noted for his wide vocal range. Lewis was the second African-American actor after Robert Guillaume to perform in the title role in Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera and the first one to do so in the Broadway production. In 2023, he reprised the role in the show's sequel, Love Never Dies, in London's West End.
Mrs. Lovett is a fictional character appearing in many adaptations of the story Sweeney Todd. Her first name is most commonly referred to as Nellie, although she has also been referred to as Amelia, Margery, Maggie, Sarah, Shirley, Wilhelmina, Mary and Claudetta. A baker from London, Mrs. Lovett is an accomplice and business partner of Sweeney Todd, a barber and serial killer from Fleet Street. She makes meat pies from Todd’s victims.
Johanna is a fictional character appearing in the story of Sweeney Todd. In the original version of the tale, the penny dreadful The String of Pearls (1846–7), her name is Johanna Oakley and she is no relation of Todd. In the popular musical adaptation by Stephen Sondheim, inspired by Christopher Bond's play Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1973), she is the daughter of Benjamin Barker and his wife, Lucy. In this version she is the ward of Judge Turpin, the man who falsely convicted her father and raped her mother.
Paul Gemignani is an American musical director with a career on Broadway and West End theatre spanning over forty years.
Eddie Korbich is an American actor, singer and dancer. He was born in Washington, D.C., but grew up in Shamokin, Pennsylvania.
Sondheim on Sondheim is a musical revue consisting of music and lyrics written by Stephen Sondheim for his many shows. It is conceived and directed by James Lapine. The revue had a limited run on Broadway in 2010.
Timothy Nolen was an American actor and baritone who had an active career in operas, musicals, concerts, plays, and on television for over four decades. He was the second actor to play the title role in Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway replacing Michael Crawford in October 1988.
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street: The Motion Picture Soundtrack is a soundtrack to the film of the same name, released on December 18, 2007.
Jim Walton is an American actor, most notable for his leading performance in the original production of Stephen Sondheim's Merrily We Roll Along as Franklin Shephard.
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