In May 2024, Great Performances presents its seventh annual “Broadway’s Best” line-up, premiering on PBS (check local listings), pbs.org/gperf, and the PBS App. Audra McDonald fans are in for an extra-special treat as the six-time Tony Award winner is featured in two exciting premieres: Audra McDonald at the London Palladium (Friday, May 17 at 9 p.m.) and Rodgers & Hammerstein’s 80th Anniversary: My Favorite Things (Friday, May 31 at 9 p.m.).
Before you enjoy these specials, here are some of McDonald’s other showstopping performances on Great Performances and other PBS performing arts series.
1) Great Performances – Some Enchanted Evening: Celebrating Oscar Hammerstein II (1995)
Audra McDonald made her Great Performances debut in this truly enchanting special hosted by Julie Andrews at New York City Center. The eclectic cast included Keith Carradine, Patti LaBelle, Rebecca Luker, Lonette McKee, Willie Nelson, Mandy Patinkin, Bernadette Peters, Dawn Upshaw, Vanessa Williams, and more. McDonald performed two songs from the Oscar Hammerstein-Sigmund Romberg operetta The New Moon: “Lover, Where Can You Be” and “One Kiss,” a duet with Peabo Bryson. She also joined a showstopping ensemble performance of “The Sound of Music.”
2) Great Performances – My Favorite Broadway: The Leading Ladies (1999)
In September 1998, Audra McDonald joined a galaxy of Broadway stars – Jennifer Holliday, Dorothy Loudon, Rebecca Luker, Bebe Neuwirth, Faith Prince, Elaine Stritch, and many more – onstage at Carnegie Hall in a gala concert hosted by Julie Andrews. Great Performances was there to capture the magical evening. “The one performer…who seemed to embody everything that is best about contemporary Broadway singing was the remarkable Audra McDonald,” The New York Times raved in its review.
Watch Audra McDonald, Judy Kuhn, and Marin Mazzie perform an Andrew Lloyd Webber medley in Great Performances — My Favorite Broadway: The Leading Ladies below.
3) Great Performances — Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny From LA Opera (2007)
McDonald made her Los Angeles Opera debut in 2007, starring alongside Patti LuPone in Sweeney Todd director John Doyle’s production of Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. Set in a mythical sin city called Mahagonny where money rules, lust runs rampant, and the pursuit of pleasure is paramount, Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s opera premiered in Germany in 1930 and was banned by the Nazis when they rose to power. In the 2007 production that aired on Great Performances, McDonald portrayed prostitute-with-a-heart-of-gold Jenny – a role made famous by Lotte Lenya – opposite LuPone as the town’s feisty madam.
Watch highlights from Great Performances — Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny From LA Opera below.
4) Great Performances — Sondheim: The Birthday Concert (2010)
The New York Philharmonic’s starry March 2010 concert celebrating Stephen Sondheim’s 80th birthday was a veritable Who’s Who of Broadway’s finest performers, featuring Audra McDonald, Laura Benanti, Michael Cerveris, Victoria Clark, Joanna Gleason, Patti LuPone, Marin Mazzie, Donna Murphy, Mandy Patinkin, Bernadette Peters, Elaine Stritch, and more. Audra McDonald lit up the stage in “Too Many Mornings” – a duet from Follies with Nathan Gunn – and “The Glamorous Life” from A Little Night Music.
Watch the trailer for Great Performances – Sondheim: The Birthday Concert below.
5) Great Performances 40th Anniversary Celebration (2013)
Great Performances celebrated its 40th anniversary on PBS in grand style with a special evening at New York City’s Lincoln Center featuring reminiscences and performances by a stellar roster of diverse alumni including Audra McDonald, Julie Andrews, Don Henley, David Hyde Pierce, Josh Groban, Itzhak Perlman, Peter Martins, Patti Austin and Take 6, Elīna Garança, and Michael Bublé. McDonald performed “Dear Friend” from She Loves Me and cabaret favorite “Stars and the Moon” from Jason Robert Brown’s Songs for a New World.
Watch Audra McDonald sing “Dear Friend” from She Loves Me in Great Performances 40th Anniversary Celebration below.
6) Live From Lincoln Center – Audra McDonald in Concert: Go Back Home (2013)
McDonald won an Emmy Award as host of the PBS performing arts series Live From Lincoln Center. For the season finale in May 2013, the Broadway superstar had a chance to step center stage in her own Live From Lincoln Center special and shine a light on her favorite music and composers, performing gems from Stephen Sondheim, Adam Guettel, Cole Porter, Kander and Ebb, and songs from her album Go Back Home.
Watch the trailer here, and learn why the song “Edelweiss” has a special place in Audra McDonald’s heart in this 2013 PBS NewsHour interview below.
7) Live From Lincoln Center — Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street — In Concert with the New York Philharmonic (2014)
Audra McDonald played double duty again as host and performer in this starry, sold-out concert version of Stephen Sondheim’s macabre musical that kicked off Live From Lincoln Center’s 40th anniversary season. Murder and mayhem filled Avery Fisher Hall in director Lonny Price’s bold production, which featured McDonald as the Beggar Woman, bass-baritone Bryn Terfel as demonic Victorian-era barber Sweeney Todd, Emma Thompson as Mrs. Lovett in her Philharmonic debut, and Christian Borle as Pirelli.
Watch the trailer below.
8) A Celebration of American Creativity: In Performance at the White House (2016)
Former President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama invited a select group of artists to the White House in 2016 to perform in a special concert celebrating the American canon and honoring the 50th anniversary of the National Foundation of the Arts and Humanities Act. Audra McDonald was part of this uplifting evening, which also included performances by Buddy Guy, Queen Latifah, MC Lyte, Keb’ Mo’, Smokey Robinson, Trombone Shorty, Esperanza Spalding, Brian Stokes Mitchell, James Taylor, and Usher.
Watch Audra McDonald perform “Anyplace I Hang My Hat is Home” in A Celebration of American Creativity: In Performance at the White House below.
9) United in Song: Celebrating the Resilience of America (2020)
This 2020 New Year’s Eve special marked the end of a year that saw the world turned upside down by the COVID-19 pandemic and grappling with the significant presence of social injustice. Helmed by Luke Frazier and the American Pops Orchestra, and filmed at George Washington’s Mount Vernon and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., the concert reunited McDonald once again with her beloved Ragtime and Shuffle Along co-star Brian Stokes Mitchell, along with Renée Fleming, Denyce Graves, Josh Groban, Morgan James, Patti LaBelle, Yo-Yo Ma, and Latin Grammy winner Juanes, in a musical celebration of our nation’s diversity and the things that bring us together as Americans.
Watch Audra McDonald perform “Climb Ev’ry Mountain” from The Sound of Music in United in Song: Celebrating the Resilience of America here, and watch the trailer below.
Watch a preview of Great Performances: Audra McDonald at the London Palladium.
Watch a preview of Great Performances — Rodgers & Hammerstein’s 80th Anniversary: My Favorite Things.
Great Performances “Broadway’s Best” line-up is part of Broadway and Beyond, a special collection of theater and arts programming from The WNET Group you can enjoy on-air and online. If you live in the tri-state area, visit thirteen.org/broadway for more information.
