Someone 'Wicked' this way comes

"Defying Gravity" was the ticket to Tony-winning stardom for Idina Menzel. Now she hopes to defy the odds by bouncing from Broadway to pop stardom.

Barbra Streisand did it. And no one since, really.

Knowing the challenge, Menzel turned to hit producer Glen Ballard, who helped transform Alanis Morissette into an overnight star and worked on successful albums by Aerosmith, the Dave Matthews Band, Josh Groban and Annie Lennox.

"I was pinching myself the whole year and a half that I was in the studio working with him because it was a dream of mine," said the "Rent" and "Wicked" star, who will perform Saturday at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul. "I feel I was very honest and authentic, and I didn't alienate my theater fans because I still sing big and challenging melodies. Yet I was able to be more intimate and personal because it's my own music."

While she's no Streisand, Menzel, 37, shows remarkable range on "I Stand"-- from penetrating intimacy ("Perfume and Promises") to dance-floor instincts ("Gorgeous") to "American Idol"-like bravura ("Brave"). She has a big, potent voice.

Even though her album, released in January by Warner Bros., can't be found on any of Billboard's charts, Menzel's Broadway credentials have landed her an upcoming PBS special and other TV exposure.

"I'm happy that I have the kind of career that is multifaceted, and people are taking a ride with me," said the singer, who co-wrote all but one of the songs on "I Stand." "My fans are not trying to pigeonhole me."

While the green-faced "Wicked" star is no greenhorn when it comes to pop (her 1998 debut, "Still I Can't Be Still," was "more angry and more sexual"), this is her first concert tour. "I have my own tour bus and my own band," she said recently from Nashville. "To travel the country and perform my own music is something I've always wanted to do."

'Rent' and Ray Charles

This is the career the native New Yorker aimed for. After becoming obsessed at age 8 with the musical "Annie" and performing in grade-school musicals, Menzel became a wedding singer at 15. Three years after earning a drama degree from New York University, she scored a Tony nomination as Maureen in the original cast of "Rent" in 1996. She did some off-Broadway shows, cut her little-heard debut for Hollywood Records and eventually became the wicked witch in "Wicked," which earned her a Tony in 2004. She also has appeared in several movies, including 2007's "Enchanted" (as Patrick Dempsey's fiancée). She splits her time between New York and Los Angeles, where her husband, Taye Diggs (they met in "Rent"), stars in TV's "Private Practice."

All along, Menzel has been recording. A duet she cut with Ray Charles in 1998 wasn't released until 2005's posthumous "Genius and Friends." In 2004 she offered a collection of Broadway tunes, and the following year she had a song on the "Desperate Housewives" soundtrack.

Menzel's St. Paul concert will showcase various aspects of her life and career, including her wedding-singer days and her Broadway shows (expect acoustic versions of her famous songs).

"It's an eclectic evening," she said. "I'm pretty spontaneous. I like to field questions from the audience. I keep it loose. I get bored if I don't have surprises."

Her Twin Cities debut falls on a night packed with appealing concerts -- Sheryl Crow and James Blunt are at Northrop, Melissa Etheridge at O'Shaughnessy, Booker T & the MGs at the Minnesota Zoo and Joshua Radin and Vanessa Carlton at the Cabooze.

Which of those would Menzel attend?

"I'd have to say Melissa Etheridge because I just met her," Menzel said. "She wrote me this amazing e-mail that her daughter is a fan of mine and she thought 'Oh God, what is this music my daughter is listening to?' She was pleasantly surprised and was taken with my album as a writer. She wrote me this encouraging e-mail. And we met for the first time just last week in New York City. And I couldn't go to her concert, which she invited me to, because I was upstate working on this [new Broadway show] with Duncan Sheik. So I have to say I owe her a concert."

Jon Bream • 612-673-1719