Stritch - A Role Model for Singers?

Surfing the web, I found some comments by Anthony Tommasini in The New York Times to be of particular interest to students of singing. Praising the cabaret act that Elaine Stritch is currently presenting at the Cafe Carlyle, he tells an amusing anecdote about conductor James Levine's admiration for La Stritch and then goes on to explain that what makes her performance so remarkable

"has little to do with the quality of her vocalism. Her sound may be raw and patchy, her pitch may be approximate, but her cabaret show is a vivid reminder that, in essence, song is musicalized speech. Words come first in her artistry. She knows how to put lyrics across, how to deliver a song. In the ruminative "I Think I Like You" (music and lyrics by Leslie Bricusse), you sense Ms. Stritch pondering her feelings with each new phrase, as if searching for the words to express them at that moment.

Her silences between phrases - when she holds a thought and hardly moves - are riveting. They reminded me of the way Maria Callas used to sing stretches of dramatic recitative as Bellini's Norma, making the silences as gripping as the arrestingly sung phrases. Of course, Ms. Stritch could not have taken such interpretive liberties were it not for the attentive playing of her excellent six-piece band, directed by the stylish pianist Rob Bowman.

Opera singers, who can become obsessed with technique, should read the letters of Mozart, who was always directing singers in his operas to 'think carefully of the meaning and force of the words.'"