Joanne Beretta (November 14, 1933 – July 24, 2020) was an American

cabaret Cabaret is a form of theatrical entertainment featuring music, song, dance, recitation, or drama. The performance venue might be a pub, a casino, a hotel, a restaurant, or a nightclub with a stage for performances. The audience, often dining or d ...

singer.

Early life

Beretta was born in

Oakland Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third largest city overall in the Bay A ...

, California, the daughter of Louis Joseph Beretta and Mary C. O'Neill Beretta. Her father was born to Italian immigrants in Canada, and her mother was born in Ireland. She graduated from Fremont High School and attended

San Francisco State University San Francisco State University (commonly referred to as San Francisco State, SF State and SFSU) is a public research university in San Francisco. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers 118 different b ...

, but left to begin a singing career.

Career

Beretta was a cabaret singer based first in San Francisco, and for most of her career in New York. Early in her career she worked with composer

John Wallowitch John Wallowitch (February 11, 1926 – August 15, 2007) was an American songwriter and cabaret performer. He wrote over 2,000 songs; his works include "Bruce", "Come a Little Closer", "I See the World Through Your Eyes", "Back on the Town" ...

and singer

Johnny Mathis John Royce Mathis (born September 30, 1935) is an American singer of popular music. Starting his career with singles of standard music, he became highly popular as an album artist, with several dozen of his albums achieving gold or platinum s ...

; she was also associated with

Tommy Tune Thomas James Tune (born February 28, 1939) is an American actor, dancer, singer, theatre director, producer, and choreographer. Over the course of his career, he has won ten Tony Awards, the National Medal of Arts, and a star on the Hollywood Wal ...

and actress

Kathleen Chalfant Kathleen Ann Chalfant (née Bishop; born January 14, 1945) is an American actress. She has appeared in many stage plays, both on Broadway and Off-Broadway, as well as making guest appearances on television series, including the ''Law & Order'' fr ...

in her career. "Clubs are probably the best training anyone could possibly have," she told an interviewer in 1978. "If you can handle a nightclub audience, you can handle just about anything." Her voice in the 1970s was described as "exceptional in its purity, flexibility, control, and shading." On stage, Beretta appeared in ''New Faces of 1962, Three Cheers for the Tired Businessman'' (1963)'','' ''

The Threepenny Opera ''The Threepenny Opera'' ( ) is a "play with music" by Bertolt Brecht, adapted from a translation by Elisabeth Hauptmann of John Gay's 18th-century English ballad opera, ''The Beggar's Opera'', and four ballads by François Villon, with music ...

Little Mary Sunshine ''Little Mary Sunshine'' is a musical that parodies old-fashioned operettas and musicals. The book, music, and lyrics are by Rick Besoyan. The original Off-Broadway production premiered November 18, 1959 at the Orpheum Theatre in New York Ci ...

'', ''

The Skin of Our Teeth ''The Skin of Our Teeth'' is a play by Thornton Wilder that won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It opened on October 15, 1942, at the Shubert Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, before moving to the Plymouth Theatre on Broadway on November 18, 194 ...

,'' and ''

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum ''A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum'' is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart. Inspired by the farces of the ancient Roman playwright Plautus (254–184 BC), specifica ...

'' (1965). Beretta recorded a live album, ''Joanne Beretta Sings at the Madeira Club'' (1967). She won an

Obie Award The Obie Awards or Off-Broadway Theater Awards are annual awards originally given by ''The Village Voice'' newspaper to theatre artists and groups in New York City. In September 2014, the awards were jointly presented and administered with the A ...

for her portrayal of a male character in ''The Club'' (1976)'','' and she sang a leading role in ''Doc and Lola'' (1978)'','' directed by her husband, Rocco Bufano. She stopped performing in 1978, and turned full-time to design work. She made a return to the microphone in 2006, and recorded a comeback album, ''Love Life'' (2006), with pianist Franklin Roosevelt Underwood and bassist John Beal as her accompanists.

Personal life

Beretta married writer and director Rocco Bufano in 1958; they separated but were still married when he died in 1989. She died after a fall in July 2020, aged 86 years, in New York. She was included in the Episcopal Actors' Guild's annual memorial list."The 2020 Annual Memorial List"
''The Eaglet'' 32(November 2020): 2.

References

External links

Joanne Beretta singing "Lazy Afternoon"
from ''Madeira Club'' (1967), on YouTube. {{DEFAULTSORT:Beretta, Joanne 1933 births 2020 deaths Cabaret singers Musicians from Oakland, California American people of Italian descent Fremont High School (Oakland, California) alumni