It has been a year since the final curtain fell on Les Miserables. After Cats, it's the second longest-running Broadway show of all time at 6,612 performances over 16 years.
But out on tour (and even in a growing number of high school productions), the show goes on for the sprawling saga of postrevolutionary France, adapted by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg from the Victor Hugo novel. Tuesday, Les Miz, as aficionados call it, returns for a two-week engagement at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, where the tour premiered in 1988 and has played many times.
It's a really big show, the only current national tour of the musical, boasting a 36-member cast, 18-member orchestra, the famous barricades (about 6 tons worth), a 34-foot turntable, five fog machines and more than 1,000 costume pieces.
Les Miserables opens Tuesday and continues through May 29 at Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, 1010 N MacInnes Place, Tampa. Show times are 7:30 p.m. Tue.-Thur. and May 24; 8 p.m. Fri.; 2 and 8 p.m. Sat.; 2 and 7:30 p.m. Sun.; and 2 p.m. May 26. $34.50-$69.50. 813 229-7827 or toll-free 1-800-955-1045 outside of the immediate bay area; or www.tbpac.org $34.50-$69.50.
Guitarist finds the deepest meanings
Guitarist Sharon Isbin, above, is the soloist in Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez with the Florida Orchestra this weekend. Even though the concerto is the most famous guitar work, and Isbin makes her third recording of it in June, with the New York Philharmonic, she doesn't get tired of it.
"It has so much depth to it emotionally that you can always find something new," she said. "The wonderful agility of the outer dance movements contrasting with the lyricism of the inner movement really give you a good workout and a lot to express."
Also on the program are Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique and Gabriela Frank's Three Latin-American Dances, with Susan Haig conducting. Performances are at 8 p.m. Friday at Morsani Hall of the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center in Tampa, 8 p.m. Saturday at the Mahaffey Theater at Bayfront Center in St. Petersburg and 7:30 p.m. May 16 at Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater. $21 to $45. 813 286-2403 or toll-free 1-800-662-7286; www.floridaorchestra.org
