The Wild Blog in the West

Around 2010, Cameron Mackintosh and company decided to commemorate the 25th Anniversary of Les Miserables  by updating the score, set design, and costumes and sending the musical back out on tour. Then in late 2010, Mackintosh staged a concert at the O2 Arena in London, complete with the same types of speeches and performances that were a part of the 10th Anniversary Concert.  A CD of the Tour was issued, as was a DVD of the Concert.  The Tour and Concert were completely separate entities, but thanks to some poor promotion (at least on PBS in the United States), many fans thought that they were the same thing.  That is not so surprising, since the DVD and CD of the 10th Anniversary Concert contained the same cast and songs.  When fans bought the Tour CD thinking that it contained the Concert cast, they were outraged.  The result was several reviews that rather unfairly maligned the 25th Anniversary Tour for not being the 25th Anniversary Concert. ...

So Les Miserables premiered all over the world and became an enormous hit.  Then all of a sudden, 10 years had passed.  Cameron Mackintosh simply could not let that anniversary go by unannounced, so in October 1995, a concert was held to honor the musical. The concert would take place at the Royal Albert Hall in London.  The cast would consist of either performers who had originated their roles, or performers who were standouts.  A DVD of the performance would be released in 1998, possibly in conjunction with the CD.  This would be the first major cast recording of the musical to be done live. The staging was different from the usual musical staging since, of course, this was a concert.  Therefore, the performers stood at microphones in costume while other performers sat behind them waiting for their turn.  There was minimal action to explain what was going on, except for spliced-in reenactments of certain parts of the musical (such as the runawa...

Thinking about it, I could have done an X versus Y comparison for many of the roles in Les Miserables .  For instance, I could have done Colm Wilkinson versus John Owen-Jones, or Frances Ruffelle versus Lea Solanga.  Jean Valjean and Eponine are both characters upon whom, over time, actors have been able to place their unique stamp.  And to some extent, I do comparisons between the various performers in certain roles in each album post I do.  So why devote an entire post to the performers who played Enjolras, who isn't even a "main" character in the story per se? Maybe it is just my bias at work.  Enjolras has always been a favorite character of mine.  He is the leader of the student revolution, dynamic, passionate, and romantic.  In the musical, his role is usually sung by someone with a distinctive baritone, and he is given endless opportunities to send notes soaring ("Before the barricades ariiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiise!"  "They will come when we caa...

We interrupt the ongoing Les Miserables retrospective to bring you the following news: a new trailer of the movie has finally been released! Well, technically, it was released weeks ago.  First in Japan, then in Europe (in the UK, it was released with the James Bond Skyfall movie) and Australia, but nowhere in the United States or other parts of the world.  If we wanted to see the trailer, our only options were to watch a bootleg or to content ourselves with a 30-second television spot that is just one-fifth the length.  Then somehow the trailer got posted to multiple media sites, only for Universal to yank them down.  Then Universal gave in and said that due to the "unforeseen trailer leak," it would post the International trailer on an official site.  Um, thanks?  How long would we have had to wait otherwise? Nonetheless, the trailer is up, and you can watch for yourself.  My thoughts are below. Overall, I really liked it, and it's making me...

I'm embarrassed to say that for years, I ignored the Les Miserables  Complete Symphonic Recording based on the mistaken belief that it was just the orchestrations.  The orchestrations are lovely, but I wanted to hear singing.  Fortunately, a few years ago, I realized the error of my ways and downloaded the Complete Symphonic Recording onto my iTunes. Unlike the past two English-language recordings, the Complete Symphonic Recording is not of a specific cast.  Cameron Mackintosh had originally intended to do the recording using the Australian cast, but ended up recording the album in three different locations around the world, using an international cast.  As a result, actors from diverse locations as Japan, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States were brought together seamlessly, more or less. As the title states, this is the first album to contain the entire musical, at least the musical as it existed in 1989, following its debut on Broadway. ...

In 1986, Les Miserables would premiere at the Kennedy Center's Opera House in Washington, D.C. for an eight-week run.  The production then moved to Broadway in March of 1987.  It's not clear to me exactly when they occurred, but by the time Les Miz arrived on Broadway, it had undergone several changes. What would result would be the English-language version of Les Miz that we now consider "definitive" -- or at least we did until the 1998 changes came along that shortened things further, and then certain changes were made to the 2007 Broadway revival, and then the 25th Anniversary production made even more cuts to the songs and score. The Production As with London, I never had the privilege of seeing the original Broadway production live.  However, I did see the touring production a few years later, so I at least have a vague recollection of what that version of the musical was like.  The most obvious changes were the following: 1.  "Little People...