A Conversation With ALFIE BOE

Alfie Boe – affectionately known as the nation’s favourite tenor – is the latest in a distinguished line of big voices to swagger into the role of Jean Valjean in Boublil and Schönberg’s epic musical Les Misérables.

Cameron Mackintosh chose him to front the 25th Anniversary concert at London’s O2 Arena and the title track of his debut album for Decca has Alfie spinning the show’s most poignant number “Bring Him Home” high in a voice that promises to make him the most popular Valjean of them all. In this exclusive and wide-ranging audio podcast Alfie talks to Edward Seckerson about his incredible journey from Blackpool to Broadway – where he starred in Baz Luhrmann’s ground-breaking staging of Puccini’s La Boheme – to English National Opera and the Royal Opera House and back again to the Queen’s Theatre where he will resume the Les Mis experience in June 2011. He talks freely of his eclectic musical tastes from Elvis Presley to Richard Tauber and Luciano Pavarotti and lets us in on the often personal reasons for choosing the show tunes that make up this already chart-topping album – like how Matt Lucas got to dream “The Impossible Dream” with him…?

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