Them Broadway job, supported by the lady crystal-clear operatic soprano, brought the lady Tony honor nominations for “Show vessel,” “The sounds Man” and “Mary Poppins.”

Rebecca Luker, the actor and artist just who in an acclaimed three-decade career on ny stage embodied the substance of this Broadway melodious ingenue in strike revivals of “Show motorboat,” “The noises of Music” and “The Music guy,” died on Wednesday in a medical facility in New york. She am 59.

The death had been affirmed by Sarah Fargo, this lady rep. Ms. Luker launched in February that she received amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, popularly known as A.L.S. or Lou Gehrig’s condition.

Ms. Luker’s Broadway career, powered by the crystal-clear operatic soprano, helped bring the woman three Tony Award nominations. The 1st was actually for “Show Boat” (1994), which she starred Magnolia, the captain’s dewy-fresh teenager little girl, whose life is ruined by relationships to a riverboat bettor. The other got for “The Music Man” (2000), in which she would be Marian, the prim lake City librarian exactly who enchants a traveling flimflam boyfriend whom feels — incorrectly — that he’s merely driving through town.

In The Middle, Ms. Luker satisfied critics by taking part in against type in a 1997 Encores! production of “The Guys From Syracuse.” As Adriana, the overlooked partner exactly who gets the woman groove back (together husband’s long-lost twin brother), she donned slinky 1930s gowns and exuded exactly what Ben Brantley, in the review for the York occasions, known as “a disarmingly confectionary sexiness.”

Having fun with Adriana would be exciting, Ms. Luker admitted. “For once in my own lives, I got to do a bit,” she taught the changing times in 1998. “Learning flip around the audience, teaching themselves to hold for laughs — we consumed it with a spoon.”

But in the end of this seasons, she was actually deep into ingenue place once again, having fun with Maria, the undisciplined inexperienced nun changed live-in governess of seven, in “The audio of Music.”

When This Tart garnered the lady third Tony nomination, this for the very best presented actress in a musical, it actually was for having fun with Winifred Bankers, a married Englishwoman with two family and a talented nursemaid, in “Mary Poppins” (2006).

For those this lady triumph in musicals, Ms. Luker decided not to recognize as a show-tunes kind. “I am just so maybe not a musical theater guy,” she instructed Playbill in 2003. “I favor stone music and jazz. I love the ’70s goods I knew growing up.”

Rebecca Joan Luker was developed on April 17, 1961, in Birmingham, Ala., and grew up in Helena, limited city close. She got almost certainly four children of Norse Doak Luker Jr., a construction staff, and Martha (Baggett) Luker, the area highest school’s treasurer. Rebecca sang in her own ceremony choir (1st Baptist of Alabaster) and was actually an associate with the Thompson premium march strap.

In school, she registered an appeal pageant. Singing “Much A lot more,” the ballad of girlish dreams and self-discipline from

“The Fantasticks,” she won an university grant as 1st runner-up to Alabama’s Junior Miss.

That took this lady to the institution of Montevallo, simply 14 mile after mile from the woman father and mother’ house, just where she ended up being a popular music big and was given their diploma back in 1984. Graduation is a-year later than arranged because she obtained a pause to work with Michigan Opera show, just where she met this lady future ny rep. Simply 5yrs after college or university, she would be on the Broadway level, assuming top honors female character in “The Phantom for the Opera”— Christine, the chorus woman that’s the object of this phantom’s affections.

“Phantom” is her Broadway first appearance; she set out since the understudy on the unique star, Sarah Brightman; started to be an alternate; and accepted over as Christine in 1989. She continued utilizing the series until 1991.

Ms. Luker moved on immediately to some other Broadway series: She starred a soul, the little orphan girl’s useless Aunt Lily, in “The formula backyard.” As part of his review through the occasions, Frank fancy singled-out “We noticed Someone Crying,” Ms. Luker’s haunting trio with Mandy Patinkin and Daisy Egan, for particular praise.

In lot of of her further Broadway jobs, Ms. Luker exchanged original actor in a long-running success. She got over as Claudia, the director-protagonist’s movie-star muse, in “Nine” (2003); Marie, the moody fairy godmother, in “Cinderella” (2013); and Helen, the annoyed spouse and mother just who misses getting an actress — in the same manner Mrs. Banks had in “Mary Poppins” — in “Fun Home” (2016).

She increased earlier subtly in a number of her later off-Broadway duties. Twenty years after starring in a 1996 revival of “Brigadoon” as Fiona, a Scottish lass so rare she truly does arrive just once a hundred years, she starred a droll Buffalo matron in A.R. Gurney’s comic drama “Indian blood flow” (2006). In 2011, she am an Italian duchess grieving their son’s loss in the musical “Death usually takes any occasion,” by Maury Yeston, Thomas Meehan and Peter Stone.

Ms. Luker in addition got a thriving cabaret job, showing up at personal locale like cafe Carlyle and Feinstein’s/54 Here, but she professed an exclusive fascination with “the alive knowledge of forward of a band.”

The point is always their fundamental property, but she do finally create the girl monitor operating first appearance inside her latter 30s when this chick appeared in “Cupid and Cate” (2000), a characteristic area of reputation tv motion picture which she starred the heroine’s excellent and perfectly reasonable sister. Between 2010 and 2020, she got guest duties on line including “Boardwalk kingdom” and “N.C.I.S. Brand-new Orleans” and starred in three characteristic movies, like “Not disappear” (2012), a drama about a teenage rock-band.

The girl final level character was actually as a small-town minister’s narrow-minded partner in a 2019 Kennedy facility creation of “Footloose.” She conducted at a concert honoring the lyricist Sheldon Harnick in March 2020.

This Model previous capabilities was at June, via Move , in a prerecorded perks abilities, “At House With Rebecca Luker.”

“anytime I perform,” she taught The Times briefly before that report, “I think they heals me. It can help me feel just like I’m however part of some thing.”

Ms. Luker partnered Gregory Jbara, an actor, in 1993; they divorced in 1996. In 2000 she married the actor Danny Burstein, who she achieved whenever they starred collectively in “Time and Again” in north park.

Mr. Burstein survives her, as does two stepsons, Zachary and Alexander Burstein; a brother, Roger; a related, Suzanne Luker; the woman, Martha Hales; along with her stepfather, Lamar Hales. Another brother, Stephen, died just last year.

Looking down on her behalf career in a 2016 theatre everyone podcast, Ms. Luker shown appreciation your functions she’d experienced but accepted that this beav almost certainly needs shattered outside of the leading-lady mold — studied working lengthier and far more severely, appeared in considerably plays, completed way more drama.

“If only I got branched on a little bit more,” she believed cheerily. “Maybe starred a bitch or something.”