“There was a barber and his wife/And she was beautiful,” he sings, letting the sustained tone on the word “beautiful” swell with shaky vibrato and linger with impotent longing. Yet when he sings, his voice crackles and breaks with sadness. Beneath this Sweeney’s vacant, sullen exterior is a man consumed with a murderous rage that threatens to burst forth every time he slowly takes a breath and is poised to speak. Beyond his good pitch and phrasing, the expressive colorings of his singing are crucial to the portrayal. Still, he brings such breadth of statement and lyrical integrity to his phrasing that I can’t believe the performance was spliced together from mini-fragments.Įven if it was, the on-screen results are what counts. Of course he recorded the role in a sound booth in a recording studio, so he had plenty of takes to get things right. His ear is obviously excellent, because his pitch is dead-on accurate. Though he played guitar in rock bands for years and sang backup vocals, he has said that when he signed up for “Sweeney Todd” he had never sung a complete song in public. Depp has debunked his own musical skills in interviews. There is musical distinction in his work. I don’t mean to suggest that his vocal performance is merely a savvy kind of sung speech.
But too many opera singers are overly focused on making beautiful sounds and sending notes soaring at the expense of crisp diction and textual clarity. These principles of vocal artistry matter just as much onstage, as the best operatic artists understand. Expression, nuance, intention and controlled intensity matter more than vocal richness and sustaining power. Depp’s portrayal, words come first in the shaping of a phrase.
“Speak to me, friend/Whisper, I’ll listen,” he continues in a hushed, confessional voice. Lovett, his accomplice, has stashed away during his unjust imprisonment. “These are my friends/See how they glisten,” he intones to the gleaming silver razors that Mrs. Don’t expect him to play the role onstage.īut in the film he can almost whisper many lines. His voice does not have much heft or power. Depp, who is nominated for a Golden Globe for best actor in a comedy or musical, takes a film actor’s approach to singing. Or perhaps the way to put it is that his performance as captured on screen is stunning in every dimension: dramatically, psychologically, physically and, yes, vocally. But Sweeney Todd is a vocally daunting role in a musically complex Sondheim score. Depp would surely be able to convey the tormented demon barber of Fleet Street. On one level it seemed an ingenious casting stroke. Depp would play the title role in Tim Burton’s film of “Sweeney Todd.” As a devotee of Stephen Sondheim’s musicals and a big Johnny Depp fan, I was surprised, intrigued and very dubious when I first heard that Mr.
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