4 February 2017: Lea Salonga in concert at the Sydney Opera House
I was delighted to find out that the wonderful Lea Salonga was going to be performing in Sydney this year and at the Sydney Opera House of all places - and being accompanied by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. I've been a fan of Lea's since she was first selected to be Miss Saigon and I loved her as Jasmine's singing voice in Aladdin, Mulan's singing voice, Tuptim in the studio recording of The King & I, Cinderella, Mei-Li in the Flower Drum song, Eponine and Fantine in Les Misérables ...
I've always been sad about the fact that I never got to see her perform the role of Kim on London ... on Broadway or Manila. I knew in particular that the Manila performance would be amazing - but alas, it was not to be … It's always made me sad that there was no official video recording of Miss Saigon - unlike Les Misérables that has had two concert recordings that both featured Lea - 10th Anniversary (Eponine) and 25th Anniversary (Fantine).
Thus, I was very pleased to learn that for the Sydney concert she would be singing a selection of her popular and well-known songs ... I was not disappointed. She might have been singing the songs from Miss Saigon for almost 30 years now, but she still sings them with the same heart, clarity and perfection as she did as a 17 year old. It sounds like mindless fan girling but Lea is amazing live. Most singers, do not sound as good live as they do on their studio recordings. They compensate in other ways of course - maybe more heart, emotion and humour? Perhaps there's a certain uniqueness to the performance, the atmosphere and audience interaction are amazing ... but pretty much all of them will have a bit of breathlessness, occasionally be a bit off ... In short, the studio version is often my preferred recording when I'm after voice quality.
But Lea singing live has perfect voice control. She is always on note, has no breathlessness, has the most beautiful diction ... and does not try to distort, vary or twist the song out of recognition. I love that. She also makes everything sound good, even songs you might not normally like. Her live version is no worse than her studio recording - and sometimes better.
I was thrilled she sang both On My Own and I Dreamed A Dream - two very, very different songs by different characters with different styles of singing - but both delivered beautifully.
Click to viewI know a lot of people like Patti LuPone and Ruthie Henshall best for Fantine, but my favourites are Debra Byrne and Lea Salonga, followed by Anne Hathaway. Lea is my favourite Eponine followed by Jane Comerford from the Vienna recording of Les Misérables. I was worried she'd sing only one but was relieved she sang both songs.
I have loved Too Much For One Heart since I saw the tiny audition snippets during the documentary "The Making of Miss Saigon" and always lamented its removal from the musical even though "Please" is a beautiful duet.
She also performed a powerful version of "I'd give my life for you" which is another favourite of mine from Miss Saigon.
Sydney is luckier than Melbourne - who will only get "I'd give my life for you" and not "Too Much For One Heart." :)
The song "Reflection" is an anthem to many because of its lyrics and Lea still sings it with the same beauty and poise she originally brought to the song in 1998.
One of the things I really like about Lea's voice is that she sings with an entirely neutral accent. Her idol Barbra Streisand is similar. Idina Menzel also sings without an accent. I find that a lot of female Broadway singers, even the ones I really love like Sutton Foster, Jodi Benson, Susan Egan, Jodi Benson and Paige O'Hara have very strong, almost hard American accents when they sing - the accents often sound quite exaggerated and even though I love their voices, I find it distracting.
A lot of the women who sing Eponine feel compelled to affect a rather annoying faux Cockney accent - Frances Ruffelle started it in the London recording and it remains up until today in the form of Samantha Barks. In sharp contrast, Lea sings with a beautiful and clear neutral accent - you can hear and understand every word. There's no reason to have an exaggerated American accent and there's certainly no reason to have a painful faux cockney accent. Why do Eponine and Gavroche sing in faux cockney accents when Jean Valjean, Fantine, Javert and others sing in a neutral accent?
Lea sang 'Burn' from Hamilton and I rather liked it better than the original version, for Lea has a rich and full voice … and again, perfect control over her voice. I was thrilled when she sang 'Send in the Clowns' and Lea's clearly a Streisand fan because she also sang a medley of songs from Yentl.
"Let it Go" from Frozen has been sung to death, but Lea's version made me like it even though I never really have before.
I also really enjoyed her version of "Defying Gravity" a song which can be done incredibly badly - but in her case, really well.
Of course she sang A Whole New World from Aladdin
We were fortunate enough to be in the front row sitting near Dave Torres, the fortunate young man plucked from the audience to sing "A Whole New World" with Lea. It's become a bit of a tradition for Lea that she will select a male audience member to sing "A Whole New World" with her. It's fun.
The encore was an unexpected medley of songs that had everyone in the concert hall of the Sydney Opera House on their feet singing along, dancing and laughing … Lea is also a very considerate and generous performer - singing not only to the people in front of her, but also taking the time to sing to the audience members on her right and on her left - so that everyone feels included and special.
It was a wonderful evening - I only wish more people knew of and appreciated how amazing a vocalist Lea Salonga is! As a fan of Lea since her Miss Saigon days and hanging around on Usenet reading her posts on alt.fan.lea.salonga, it was pretty thrilling to actually get to meet her as well.
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