Rebecca Caine is currently on tour across the UK with her show Dividing Day. Rebecca created the role of Cosette in Les Misérables for the RSC and was a celebrated Christine Daae in The Phantom of the Opera opposite Michael Crawford in the West End and her native country, Canada.
A couple of interesting bits from this interview:
One of my regrets is that in order to be taken seriously as an opera singer and cross over from musical theatre, I felt I had to wipe any trace of it from my resumé for years. In a perfect world I should have kept both careers running simultaneously but is was not a possibility then. After I aged out of my opera roles I had to very much start again in MT. I now have reached a place where I feel an anomaly. I don’t vocally fit the stereotype of an older woman. My voice is still a pretty fresh soprano sound and I exist as that person. I’m not going to change my sound – attempt to belt or do anything to endanger my vocal health – so unless people write for me there are not many roles for me, but I have been lucky to have people compose for me. I’m no longer interested in trying to be a square peg in a round hole. I’ve earned that after over four decades and I’m very proud of my strange eclectic career.
When we made Les Misérables in a stuffy basement in the bowels of the Barbican in 1985, we had no idea it would become what it became. There had never been a phenomena like it, how was anyone to know? That whole experience was extraordinary in retrospect. The original cast’s very DNA are in the very bones of that musical and will be forever. To see it go on, means so much to so many, to hear it sung when real barricades are erected, it is a gift. I’m so grateful to have been rather reluctantly plucked out of the Glyndebourne chorus by Trevor Nunn and packed off to the RSC on that hot, sunny, distant day in the summer of 1985. You never know what awaits you in this extraordinary business.
I saw Rebecca Caine in a production of Dave Malloy's Preludes a few years ago. As a huge Les Miz fan I was eager to see the original (English language) Cosette in person. She played the role of the therapist and for much of the thought it appeared it was only a speaking role. Fair enough, I thought - she's 60 years old, it's understandable that she's taking on roles that aren't as demanding. Then, some ways into the show, she started to sing. And it was glorious.