Les Mis!

This past Saturday I went down to St. George to watch Les Miserables at the Tuacahn Amphitheater. It was amazing! On the way down I had the opening notes running through my head and I was getting pretty excited. I was a little worried that I would be too critical of the singers because I have the Complete Symphonic Recording completely memorized and I know how it's all "supposed" to sound. At the beginning I kept telling myself, "it'll be different, don't expect it to sound the same..." and after the first few minutes I was able to handle the differences pretty well.

Here are some characters that I thought did an amazing job (even if they did sound different from what I was expecting):
Ryan Anderson was the Bishop of Digne. It's not a large part, but his voice is beautiful. I loved hearing him sing. I liked him much better than the guy who played Valjean and my friend and I decided that Anderson should have been Valjean's part instead. Great voice!

Jay Pierce as Javert. Another amazing voice. He sings with the Trans-Siberian Orchestra too. I loved hearing him. He was awesome! He has a fabulous bass (my favorite part to listen to!) voice.

Another very gifted singer! (I couldn't get a picture of him without the "about" stuff.) John Preator played Marius. He was also amazing. Such a beautiful voice.

I now have a picture of the lovely Melinda Lockwood Debirk who played Cosette. Her voice was beautiful. Very angelic sounding.

The rest of the cast was also great, Valjean - as already mentioned - not being my favorite, but not too terrible either. His mannerisms were kind of weird, and not what I'd expect from the part being played. Oh well.

Overall, I really enjoyed it. It's such an amazing story and the music is incredible. It was a neat setting with the mountains around us, and having the army fight from the mountain. It was also really neat to be able to see the stars while Javert was singing "The Stars."

I'm waiting for them to come out with a musical movie version. If they can do Phantom, why not Les Mis?

Now, because there are some members of the Symphonic Recording that can never be topped (in my opinion), here's a shout for them:

Philip Quast as Javert. (Isn't that a great picture?! He looks very... inspector-like...) I don't think anyone will ever sing Javert's part as well as he did. This Aussie has got a fantastic voice!

Anthony Warlow as Enjolras (another Aussie). When watching it on Saturday I'd get really excited for Enjolras to burst out with lines like, "One more day before the storm!" because I knew exactly how it "should" sound. The Enjolras at Tuacahn did a good job, but he didn't have the power that Warlow has. Imagine my complete delight when I found out that Warlow also sang the part of Jekyll and Hyde in the Jekyll and Hyde songs that I have come to love. After it clicked, it made complete sense that it should be the same person because I loved both voices so much.

side note - if you ever want a treat, look up Philip Quast and Anthony Warlow singing Lily's Eyes (from Secret Garden) on youtube. It's great.

This picture is just because it's during one of the greatest songs - "One Day More."

Now after all of that, guess what I'm listening to at work today, as I type. I'll give you two guesses, but you'll only need one.