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December 4, 2024

The Inspiring Career of Kristin Chenoweth

On December 14, our main stage will be graced by the incomparable Kristin Chenoweth. Her not-to-be-missed concert with the LA Opera Orchestra will be filled with holiday hits both old and new, some beloved Broadway classics and more, and we are over the moon as we look forward to her performance. It’s not every day that you get to see a true Broadway and television legend in action.

Kristin Chenoweth was seemingly born to perform. She grew up in Oklahoma, where she had been adopted by two chemical engineers. She later revealed in her 2023 book I’m No Philosopher, but I Got Thoughts that her biological parents were bassist Billy Ethridge (briefly a member of ZZ Top) and a woman named Lynn, who put her up for adoption in order to give her a better life. Chenoweth would be reunited with her biological parents later, and when her mother passed away in 2023, she took to Instagram to write a tribute, stating that her innate musical ability came from her mother and her father.

Chenoweth was drawn to music from her earliest childhood, performing gospel songs for local churches. By the time she turned 12, she was already singing in front of thousands at Baptist conventions. While gospel music got her singing, it was the stage that truly called out to her. Her college years saw the start of her professional theater career, performing at the Lyric Theatre in Oklahoma City in shows such as Gypsy, The Sound of Music, The King and I and Promises, Promises. Even while she was performing musical theater, she was planning a career in opera, earning a master’s degree in opera performance. She participated in several vocal competitions and was offered a scholarship from the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, earning praise as the “most promising up-and-coming singer.”

Everything was set up for Chenoweth to begin a career in opera. But while helping a friend move to New York City, she auditioned on a whim for the prestigious Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, New Jersey, an audition that went so well that she was offered the leading role of Arabella Rittenhouse in a 1993 production of Animal Crackers. She turned down the Met’s scholarship and shifted her career from opera back to musical theater.

She appeared in a number of regional theater productions over the next couple of years, continuing to refine her stage presence and acting. Her successes eventually led her to Off-Broadway, and her talents began to get noticed in New York. Most notably, a 1997appearance in Scapin with the Roundabout Theater Company caught the attention of a New York Times critic who wrote: “Kristin Chenoweth’s sob-prone ingenue is delightful.” It’s important to note that Scapin was not a musical, allowing Chenoweth to demonstrate her considerable acting chops. With her undeniable talent in both singing and acting, a Broadway debut was inevitable. This came in the spring of 1997 in the Kander and Ebb musical Steel Pier, which won her a Theatre World Award. This launched her prolific Broadway career, and she would take the Great White Way by storm in new works like William Finn’s A New Brain or classics like George and Ira Gershwin’s Strike Up the Band. The most notable role in her early Broadway career came when she was cast as Sally Brown in the 1999 Broadway revival of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. Her performance garnered her both a Tony and a Drama Desk Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical.

But that Tony was just a start, and it was time for her to become a household name. That opportunity came in 2003 where she created a role that she is still identified with, Glinda the Good Witch in the smash hit musical Wicked. Wicked was, and still is, a musical phenomenon, becoming the second highest-grossing show and the fourth-longest running show in Broadway history. (It’s still running now, all these years later.) She also won a Grammy for the original cast recording. Chenoweth starred in Wicked for nine months. To this day, songs from the musical remain frequent highlights of her concert performances.

After Wicked, Chenoweth turned her sights to television, joining the cast of The West Wing in the sixth season. She would stay on the award-winning series until it ended in 2006, and a year later she would play Olive Snook in the series Pushing Daisies, winning an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series, proving that she is a major force on the screen as well as on the stage.

Chenoweth continues to look for exciting projects today both on stage and off. Along with a cameo in the newly released Wicked film adaptation, she’s also starring in the new Netflix romcom Our Little Secret alongside Lindsay Lohan. She will also be reuniting with Wicked composer Stephen Schwartz for his Broadway-bound new musical The Queen of Versailles, based on the 2012 documentary of the same name.

After over two decades in the spotlight, Kristin Chenoweth continues to chase exciting projects while letting her innate musical ability prosper. It’s a career worth celebrating and we hope that you can come see this living legend in person. Be sure to join us for her holiday concert to experience some of her most “popular” musical highlights.

To get tickets for Kristin Chenoweth’s holiday concert click here.