One of Broadway’s biggest stars gets ready to show her ‘purest, truest self’ to a Toronto audience

A stunned Menzel had only a few seconds to collect herself before singing the number — which incidentally went on to win the Oscar for best song. In retrospect, she says it was one of the best things that happened in her career.

“From a marketing standpoint it was a fortuitous mistake,” said Menzel, on the phone from her home in L.A. a week before launching her new tour, which brings her to Toronto’s Massey Hall on Tuesday.

“People who knew me were up in arms that my name was mispronounced. And anyone who didn’t know me was like, ‘Who the hell is this person?’”

To celebrate the 10-year anniversary, she even went on TikTok and sang “Happy Birthday” to her bizarre, much-memed alter ego.

That mistake wouldn’t happen these days. Especially with the thousands of fans attending her “Take Me or Leave Me” concert, named for one of her signature songs in her breakthrough show, “Rent.”

The tour set list, which was still being fine-tuned as we talked in July, will showcase both her familiar hits like “Defying Gravity” (from the show “Wicked”) and “Let It Go,” as well as songs Menzel has written and co-written in a series of albums. And she’s got lots of stories to go with those songs (including one about the Adele Dazeem moment).

“Concerts are so different from theatre,” she said. “Once you start a play it’s like a train and you can’t get off. But for my personal concerts, I can strategize and pace myself, move things around in a different order and just be myself. I’m not in character. It can be a more vulnerable place, but it’s the best and one of the only ways to really connect with fans. It’s my purest, truest self.”

Even before finding fame onstage, TV (“Glee”) and film (“Uncut Gems”), Menzel was used to holding an audience’s attention at wedding and bar/bat mitzvah gigs.

“That was part of my musical education,” she said. “I learned so many genres of music and how to be versatile and spontaneous. You have to be ready for any request and you have to be able to work with musicians you’ve just met. These shows taught me how to be comfortable walking onto a stage and getting on the same wavelength as the audience.”

The phenomenal success of “Rent,” in which she played bisexual performance artist Maureen, came after the tragedy of composer/lyricist Jonathan Larson’s sudden death a day before the show’s first preview off-Broadway.

“It was such a complicated time, since any accolades and attention we got was bittersweet,” said Menzel. “But that experience was the foundation on which everything is built for me. It taught me that you can’t take things for granted and you have to be present and appreciate every moment.

“In your early 20s, you have no real understanding of how fleeting all of this is. So it was a great lesson for all of us in the cast to learn.”

Menzel is thrilled that two of the outsider characters she helped originate — Elphaba in “Wicked” and Elsa in “Frozen” — have helped young people feel proud of their differences.

“I love that those characters resonate with young people,” she said. “But they also speak to me as a woman of my age, too. They remind me to harness my power and use it for good, to not be ashamed and compromise myself or anybody else. These characters teach me something about myself every day.”

After her concert tour, she’ll be focused mostly on “Redwood,” the new musical she conceived with Tina Landau, about a woman who leaves her life in New York City and drives across the country, eventually finding herself in the redwood forest area of Northern California.

The show recently finished a successful workshop in La Jolla and is slotted for Broadway in January. Menzel may preview a song or two from it in the concert. But is she ready for the demanding eight-shows-a-week grind of the stage?

“I did it in La Jolla and I’ve still got it in me,” she said. “The muscle memory comes back. Live theatre is arduous and can be exhausting, but it’s also thrilling. It’s my happy place.

“I love coming to my dressing room every day — it’s my office, my home away from home. And as someone who’s been a part of many original musicals, I’m proud to be bringing another one into the world.”

And while she will likely be in rehearsals when the film version of the first part of the “Wicked” movie comes out in late November, she wouldn’t miss it for the world.

“Kristin Chenoweth (who played Glinda to her Elphie) and I are so proud to have been there from the beginning, and we’re thrilled that it will now be discovered by an even larger audience,” she said. “We’re also really confident that we’re passing the torch to two extremely talented, wonderful performers (Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande) that we both know and love personally. The movie’s in really good hands.”

“Idina Menzel: Take Me or Leave Me” plays Massey Hall, 178 Victoria St., Tuesday at 8 p.m. See masseyhall.mhrth.com for ticket information.