Angel of Music

Mom, Kami, her mother-in-law Barb, Mai (my former student from Japan), and I all attended Thursday night's performance of The Phantom of the Opera. Having already seen the show twice, I was expecting to be merely entertained by a well-rounded cast. Certainly, I've seen great Phantoms in the past (Brad Little!), but the Christines had always been a little disappointing for me. Perhaps I'm merely biased; I'm such a Sarah Brightman fan and it always seems no one lives up to her original Christine. Anyway, aside from the horrible acoustics (what the heck, Keller Auditorium? Buy some better speakers!), we enjoyed an amazing show from rockstar seats. Not only did we have a wonderful Christine and a fabulous Andre (Yay, D.C. Anderson again!) and Firmin, but the Phantom's passionate voice gave me chills of delight. He was, simply put, awesome. After reading a note in the program, we discovered that he was actually the understudy for the actor who normally had the role. I couldn't believe that such a voice would be wasted on a small role (he usually plays Joseph) and understudy part!

Friday night, after work I decided to do some digging and look up our understudy Phantom. According to someone's fan page, he had traveled with the national tour of Les Miserables as Javert. A few years ago, Kami and I had watched that show from the first row. I was suddenly struck by an idea and grabbed my playbill from that performance. Sure enough, Javert and our Phantom were the same guy: Stephen Tewksbury. I had fallen in love with his voice all of those years ago and had sent my program back to the theater for him to autograph. He had signed it and mailed it back <3 What a funny coincidence ;)

Look! Someone (not me) was sneaky and recorded him live!





I just love the mirror scene. Follow a strange, masked man through your mirror into the swirling mists of the labyrinth beneath the opera house? Oh yes, please!