Few venues offer the intimacy of a cabaret performance with the backdrop of San Diego’s famous harbor skyline. And none do it better than Humphrey’s Concerts By the Bay.

Late last month, Broadway diva and pop music singer/songwriter Idina Menzel did more than just swoop in on a broom to show the packed audience how she has defied gravity during her career that is soaring to new heights. Offering a few numbers from ground-breaking roles she originated on the Broadway stages, first as Maureen in Rent, and then as Elphaba in Wicked, Menzel also showed her vocal and entertainment range as she shared a handful of songs from her new CD, I Stand. The highlight of the show, however, was when she brought down the house with a fierce rendition of The Police’s “Roxanne.”

Already stretched with maintaining a bicoastal relationship with her hunky hubby Taye Diggs, Menzel took some time out of her very busy schedule to chat with the Gay & Lesbian Times about strong women, being green, and what it takes to go from being a wedding singer in the Bronx to Tony Award-winning full-fledged diva status.

Gay & Lesbian Times: How has the transition been from Broadway to concert stages?

Idina Menzel: For me it’s all been about performing. It’s about being an entertainer. It’s me being as authentic and honest as I can. It’s a really nice transition because I wrote most of the music on my album and it’s very personal. There’s always a vulnerability and a risk you take when you sing your own music, your own words. But I think there’s a risk you take just being an artist because you always have to put yourself out there whether you’re in character or not.

GLT: Most people would know you from either Rent or Wicked; would you say that you’re more Elphaba or Maureen?

IM: As an actor there is a little of yourself in all of your characters, so I guess both of them and many of the other characters I’ve played. They’re both pretty strong women, but sensitive women, too.

GLT: Have you ever explored your “Maureen” side?

IM: Well, no, I mean, no I haven’t. I’m all for whatever anyone else wants to do. I’m just happily married to a beautiful man and don’t think he’d particularly want me exploring that now! I do find that I stare more at women than I do at men, but I think that’s just something women do, because women are just beautiful to look at.

GLT: You partnered with Glen Ballard. How much has he influenced your work?

IM: Oh, he was a huge influence. He was the captain of the ship, really. I came in sort of with a clean slate. I’m here. I have all these things I want to say. And we spent a year and a half assembling different sounds and making different choices. He’s a great producer because he really, really puts the artist over his production.

GLT: The high-point for the audience at the concert seemed to be the cover of The Police’s “Roxanne.” It was so tribal and raw, almost an Alanis Morisette moment.

IM: Oh, good. I have a lot of respect for Alanis vocally and as a song writer, and I’m most influenced by very emotional, dramatic singers like Alanis or more so Annie Lennox. Women who have so much theatricality in their voice, and I mean that in a good way. Women who use their voices in every way, and use the entire spectrum and don’t hold back, but still come across as very genuine.

GLT: If you had the chance to do a duet with anyone, with whom would it be, and what song would you choose?

IM: If it was a guy, I would love to do a duet with Bono. It could be anything, like “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” If it was a woman, it would be Annie Lennox or Chakakahn, and, God, I don’t know, I would sing absolutely anything with them. The phone book. Anything. I would do background for them.

GLT: You’re married to Taye Diggs. Any dish there?

IM: Well, things are great, except we are living on separate coasts, so we try to make a point of seeing each other every two weeks. He’s working on his show, “Private Practice.” He loves clothes way more than I do. He knows how to put together an outfit. I’m more of a stay-at-home, jeans and T-shirt kind of gal, unless I have to put on heels and go out and do something.

GLT: Susan Eagan tells the story that she was offered the role of Elphaba and she turned it down because, “Who would want to get painted green eight times a week just to see Kristin Chenoweth get the Tony?”

IM: She said that? That’s great! But you know, although the accolades are nice, for me the most rewarding part of being in Wicked was the connection I had with younger people, and how much it means to them. More than any accolades, that connection was exponential – something that made me be stronger and stronger for the show. What’s great about the role I played was that it was about a relationship between two strong women, and how they grow and change because of one another.

GLT: Speaking of green characters … The Incredible Hulk or Kermit the Frog?

IM: Kermit the Frog.

GLT: Eric Bana or Edward Norton?

IM: Definitely Eric Bana. Eric Bana in Munich and Kermit just as Kermit.

GLT: Any thoughts on Rent closing on Broadway?

IM: It’s a bittersweet time. The show has always been a show full of joy and celebration and about sadness, and I think that’s sort of how it goes out, and I am just happy to be able to look back and know that I met my husband there 12 years ago, and I still have friends from the cast. It has changed so many peoples’ lives, and it’s changed the way we look at peoples’ sexuality, and HIV and AIDS, and it was a groundbreaking musical, both thematically and musically. To be in two original shows like that is something that I am really proud and grateful for.

GLT: Is there a show you would like to do next?

IM: Yeah, but it’s something new and original. I would like to sort of stay in that pattern of originating roles. I enjoy the process. I enjoy sitting at the piano with the composer for years ahead of time, and being a muse for someone and letting them write for you, and develop a character around who you are. It’s a real honor to have that and it’s a lot more fun. I’m not quite sure what that is yet, but there are a couple ideas in the works. I can’t wait to get back to the stage in a show!