Patti Lupone almost gave up career due to slur ‎

Patti Lupone has a “lazy tongue”.

The Broadway diva spoke to the New York Daily News about the time Stephen Sondheim scolded her at the closing night part for the Lincoln Center concert version of Company.

“It was 1 o’clock in the morning and I went to say goodbye to him and he gave me a note,” she said.

“I slur,” she shrugged. “I have a lazy tongue. He had complaints about my diction, and he’s not alone. I went, ‘I’m never going to do this again.’ But it was a valuable note and I pulled myself out of it. He’s just protecting his music.

“I swooped. He actually said, ‘You’re not singing your nightclub act’.

“I didn’t know what he was talking about. I wouldn’t hit a note directly, I would slide into it. He taught me not to swoop.”

LuPone says she’d like to teach singers raised on a steady diet of American Idol to quit embroidering composers’ music.

“It’s terrible,” she said. “When I give master classes and I hear kids sing that way, I’ll ask them, ‘Was that riff built into the song? No? Then what gives you the right to rewrite?’

“The Broadway sound is singing the notes as written. It’s that simple.”