Music Mondays: Kelli O’Hara

An Evening with Kelli O’Hara

Kelli O’Hara has established herself as one of Broadway’s greatest leading ladies. The Tony Award winner, Emmy, SAG, and Grammy-nominated actress has appeared in twelve Broadway shows for which she has garnered eight Tony Award nominations.

She won the 2015 Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical, along with Grammy, Drama League and Outer Critics nominations for her portrayal of Anna Leonowens in The King and I. O’Hara’s other Broadway credits include Kiss Me Kate, The Bridges of Madison County, Nice Work if You Can Get It, South Pacific, The Pajama Game, The Light in the Piazza, Sweet Smell of Success, Follies, Dracula, and Jekyll & Hyde.

O’Hara received an Emmy Award nomination for her portrayal of Katie Bonner in Topic’s hit web series, The Accidental Wolf, and can currently be seen on HBO’s The Gilded Age, which was nominated for a SAG award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series for Season 2. Additional film and television credits include Showtime’s Master of Sex, 13 Reasons Why, Blue Bloods, All My Children, All the Bright Places, Peter Pan Live!, Sex & The City 2, Martin Scorsese’s The Key to Reserva, The Good Fight, N3mbers, and Car Talk.

In 2015, she made history as the first artist to make the crossover from Broadway to Opera when she made her Metropolitan Opera debut in Lehar’s The Merry Widow opposite Renee Fleming and in 2018 returned as Despina in Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte. She was last seen at The Metropolitan Opera in the world premiere of Kevin Puts’, The Hours, as Laura Brown, which earned a Grammy nomination for Best Opera Recording.

O’Hara is a frequent performer on PBS’s live telecasts, The Kennedy Center Honors, and performs often alongside The New York Philharmonic and The New York Pops. Along with her two Grammy nominations, her solo albums, Always and Wonder in the World, are available on Ghostlight.

O’Hara recently completed a critically-acclaimed limited Broadway engagement of the new musical Days of Wine and Roses, which also garnered rave reviews during its Off-Broadway run at The Atlantic Theatre Company. She won the Outer Critics Circle Award and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lead Performer in a Broadway Musical in addition to receiving Tony and Drama League Nominations for her role. Upcoming projects include The Beauty and Season 3 of The Gilded Age.

The Times has hailed her as “Broadway musical’s undisputed queen”.