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  As a result I was also getting very aggressive, which was worrying. Anger was boiling up inside me, I got short-tempered with people, I was looking for trouble. If someone was being a dick in the street I’d home in on him and have a confrontation. It really wasn’t me, or at least it brought out the worst in me. I didn’t like it at all. I guess it was a combination of the endorphins party in my brain, and also the frustration pent up inside me in terms of my career, the fear of the unknown. Despite being unclear about what the Les Mis concert would be – it looked like the O2 was falling through at one point, one minute it was going to be at the Albert Hall, the next it looked like it might be cancelled altogether – I was banking on it being the thing, and I was well aware that I’d done that before, banked on TV programmes, on concerts, festivals, videos, albums that I thought could have set things alight for me, and I’d so often been disappointed. I really didn’t want this to be another one of those. And even though I’d said yes to it, these jobs are never cut and dry until they officially offer you a deal – I’d learnt that much. I hate to dwell on that doubt, but there’s always an element of that, for me at least. Diminished expectations.

  I was enjoying doing the concerts, the Kings Lynn sort of gigs, anything from 100 to 500 people, not even sold out. I loved them actually. They were a lifeline in a sense – they kept me busy, kept me working, kept me performing – Heulwen Keyte, my UK agent, was booking everything for me, kept things happening, she’s great. But those gigs can wear you down, that endless cycle. Driving, driving, driving, four times a week, hundreds of miles to different venues, and then half the time I’d turn up and there’d be no microphone, or no dressing room. Eating my dinner in the back of the car. My rider request was minimal, tea-making facilities, a towel, some fruit and some crisps, but often I’d be lucky to get a bottle of water and a towel. I never knew what the venues would be like, what the audiences would be like, or if there’d even be an audience at all. And I’d walk on stage and bust myself silly every night, sing my heart out, drive home, repeat a day or two later. I didn’t want that to be my life for the next 30 years. So I really was pursuing the personal training. I was trying to get my head round it, to convince myself that singing wasn’t everything, as much as I wanted it to be. Sarah was trying to find a good balance with my mindset, encouraging me to do it if I wanted to do it, to take classes and get certified, but equally encouraging me not to give up on the singing. She was happy, she was teaching kids drama, but she was upset for me, watching my career crisis escalate as I downed more protein shakes. I bought loads of books, went to see a friend who was a personal trainer and ran a gym in Salt Lake City. He told me more about it and said he’d offer me a job when I qualified. I’d start working for him straight away. Training pensioners, no less. I’d built myself into this big muscle mass and I’d be training pensioners.

  I was really convinced that this was what I should be doing – it scares me now. It was all a bit scattershot though. I pursued it more and looked into becoming a trainer for the Salt Lake Police Department. I was still working out and I’d started cutting down the protein powders. I was feeling fit, healthy, strong, and I thought it made sense. Because I’d become so tired and depressed about living on my own and being away from my wife and my little girl, that touring opera life, it wasn’t working for me. Even if good work started to come in from everywhere, that wasn’t what I wanted to be doing, not like that. Grace was a year old, and I felt like I was missing out on so much. Sarah wasn’t coming to England because we didn’t have a life here, a place of our own. She wanted to have roots, and the support of her family and friends to help her with Grace, while I was working in England. That’s why I was looking for opera work in America, that’s why I wanted to be a personal trainer over there, that’s why I applied to the police department. I wanted to be with my family. And if it came to it I would have done it. Deep down though, I knew I didn’t want to throw it all away. I still had that flame flickering inside, that little voice telling me that something would happen. I couldn’t ignore it. And the closer I came to Les Mis the louder it got. The more and more we talked about the concert and found out what their plans were, there were more and more reasons for optimism.

  I toured the UK with La Traviata for three or four months. That was a really good opera, David McVicar directing again, my fifth production with him. I really enjoyed the show, enjoyed singing with the Welsh National Opera, great cast, great bunch of people. And I didn’t end up having to go completely nude every night, thankfully. I did in the dress rehearsal. The first scene was me getting out of bed and walking across the stage with my backside on show, picking up my trousers from a chair, turning around, giving the audience the full-frontal and putting my pants on. But it was such a moment, such a distraction, and I think a few of the older folk were a bit upset about it all, so David canned it. In the end I’d swing my legs over the side of the bed, grab my trousers and pull them on, all people saw was a quick flash of my backside really. But I was certainly glad to be in shape, and I still like to keep fit, although I don’t go to the gym as much as I’d like to, and I don’t take any of the protein stuff. I still get regular emails from Salt Lake Police Dept, telling me they’re hiring. I should unsubscribe really – it’s not healthy.

  In September I came to London to watch Les Misérables for the first time at the Queen’s Theatre. I went to see it a few times, and was really impressed with it; the more I saw Valjean, played by Jonny Williams at the time, the more I connected with it, with him. I thought, ‘I can do this. I know this role. That’s me.’ I could see myself up there doing it. I thought, ‘This is my role. This is the one,’ and we formally accepted the offer. We still didn’t know where it was going to be, how big it would be, but I was thrilled. And I went into Káťa Kabanová for the ENO, gave it everything I had, and it was incredible. Kudrjáš is an awesome character to play. Fiery guy, bit of a fighter. He’s a teacher, philosopher, bit bohemian, he’s the show’s narrator in a way. And I got good acclaim for that, probably the best reviews I’ve had for any opera I’ve done, which was a real boost. I was starting to feel my confidence building again. We were finally given the date for the Les Misérables performance, half a year or so down the line, confirmed for the O2, which was unbelievable news. Everything suddenly seemed fantastic. I felt the best I’d felt in years. And then . . . then The Pearl Fishers happened. The drowning, the blindness, the pneumonia. Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water.

  You do one job that’s an absolute thrill and joy, for an opera company that you really respect, then you do another job for the same company that completely floors you. Completely floors you. I lost so much respect for the people that run that place when all that happened, because of the way I was treated. Neil found out that the legal maximum amount of time you’re supposed to spend in a chlorinated tank is three hours, and you have to shower every 10 or 15 minutes. I’d been in there for nearly seven hours and I’d showered once. Nobody had said otherwise. Neil kicked up a proper fuss with the ENO and tried to find out who was at fault. They deflected it onto the underwater production company, didn’t apologise. Nobody took the blame. I don’t know if they gave a damn about me or not but I was certainly left feeling as though they wouldn’t have cared if my heart had exploded on that plane because of the compressed air I’d been inhaling. Or if I’d never be able to see my kid again because I’d gone permanently blind. The director said, ‘If I’d only known, we would have done it in an hour.’ They got me a counsellor, at least. They wanted me to get better so I could get back into the show. She wasn’t really a counsellor, she was a performance psychologist, she gave me a lot of encouragement to get back on stage. And she did help me a hell of a lot, built my confidence up again. That was around the time Pierre was in hospital. I was pretty screwed up and it was helpful to talk to her, I got back on stage and did the last five shows. I think I did 8 out of 13, did the last few, then I went back to Salt Lake for the summer to learn Les Mi
sérables – I really took the role on board. I was due to go into the show in the West End for two weeks prior to the O2, at the Queen’s Theatre, so I really thrashed it out over August, spent the whole month learning the show, read up about the characters, watched DVDs, listened to other recordings . . . I knew the music, I knew my role back to front.

  That summer was really hard. Sarah had been in a play, she was happy, and she didn’t really want to come back to England. She wanted to stay in America with Grace, to get her own career back on track. She hadn’t really expressed doing that before; after all the years of running around with me she was taking a stand to make things work for the family. She was finally settled, things were going well for her and she just didn’t want to leave home. I said, ‘What if things happen with Les Mis and I need to be back in England?’ And she said, ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going to happen.’

  She couldn’t have been more supportive of me, she always has been, but she was so tired of waiting for the big thing that would turn our lives around. I was desperate for it too, we were both doing the best we could to make it all work. But just hearing her say that, that was a sucker punch. I thought my marriage was over. My insecurities and doubts were coming back to haunt me and I felt stranded, so insecure about everything. Things were looking up for me, and things were looking up for her, but on different continents, and she was there with Grace. And I thought, that’s it, I’m going to be on my own again. I was really heartbroken, really frightened to leave this time. Flying out of Salt Lake City and leaving those mountains was really tough. I was so nervous on that plane, I remember it vividly. Because as irrational as it seems now, I didn’t know if I might get an envelope from Sarah through the letterbox. Or if I’d see my daughter again. I was scared, really scared. More than she knew. If I’d expressed this to her at the time I’d have known how supportive she was, of course she was. But that flight was the worst.

  On the first day of rehearsals in London in September I did a sing-through, and Adrian Sarple, the associate director, explained the show to me in great detail, really in-depth – he really helped me immerse myself in the character. I got to know everything about this Jean Valjean, to understand him. And they pushed me, boy did they push me. That first week of rehearsals, I was throwing everything I had into it, and then they’d ask for more. I didn’t know how I could go further. I was drained at the end of each day, going back and crashing in my hotel room, then dragging myself out of bed to read the text and soak it up even more. I was jet-lagged, sat on the floor in my room looking at this score, absorbing every single word, and what every single word meant to me. In rehearsals I’d analyse every single movement I was doing, and I was trying to naturalise everything, to make everything feel spontaneous, instinctive. And the more I did that, the more they asked for. Push more, drive it more, be angrier, stronger, more aggressive . . . I felt like my brain was about to explode. They were pushing me much more than I’d ever been pushed in operas, much more. In opera, unless you’re working with an exceptional director or you’re really pushing yourself, the focus is all on the music and singing. Nothing can jeopardise that. Anything that threatens to do so is scrapped, which is why a lot of conductors and directors in opera tend to argue. Because the director wants one thing and the conductor will say, ‘Well you can’t do that because it will jeopardise him singing this top C.’ In musical theatre, it’s nothing like that. You throw everything into it, from every angle, you give your guts, your blood, your sweat, your tears. The whole damn lot. You expose yourself to that piece of music and those characters. And they still want more. When I was doing my ‘Prologue’ each night in the West End, people said I was so angry, wolf-like. There were times where I’d be drooling.

  For the first week of those rehearsals I was also performing the role every night at the Queen’s Theatre, and Valjean really became part of me. He’s a passionate guy, an angry guy, he hates injustice, and I just got him. I felt his frustration. And every single day I was taking another step towards reaching the mark for where I wanted to take that show – it was great. I never got tired of singing the music. People were saying, ‘Take it down, you don’t have to sing it out so much.’ You need to save your voice for the performances. But I couldn’t help it, it felt natural, it was in my blood, I was thoroughly enjoying it and I loved working with the cast, they were awesome. And then we started rehearsals for the O2. That was when things really started to fire up. Things with Sarah were levelling out, she was really happy for me because things were working out with Les Mis and she could see how much I was enjoying myself. I was so optimistic and she was so encouraging – she said I was the man I was when she’d first met me in San Francisco. And I had the overwhelming satisfaction that I’d left the opera world, left that Pearl Fishers nightmare behind to do a job that I was truly loving, to play a character I really wanted to inhabit. And I was being given so much more respect! Just as a human being, let alone for the work. It was such a relief, it really was.

  The size of the O2 arena, the space we were performing in hadn’t quite dawned on me – obviously I knew how big it was and how many people were coming, but being there and seeing it on the night was an incredible thrill. Then Matt Lucas, who was playing Thénardier, told me to look at the TV monitor. You go through stages in the hours before you’re due to perform, at least I do. I get into the venue, size it up, look at all the seats in the room and imagine people’s faces in them. You become part of the room in a way – I do it every time, get a sense of the surroundings, what I’m going to have to deal with. But it wasn’t until I was in my dressing room, less than half an hour before the show, that it really hit me. Matt came in with a video guy, for the documentary he was making, and said, ‘Have you seen the TV?’ I hadn’t. He said, ‘Don’t look around yet,’ because he wanted the camera to catch my expression. Then I looked up at this monitor and my heart almost stopped. I couldn’t believe the amount of people coming into the O2. Absolutely gobsmacked. I couldn’t even fathom that a place like that existed, I couldn’t believe that all those people would be seeing me sing that role of Jean Valjean. It was great! Because it’s the audience that bring the excitement into a room, not the performer. And it wasn’t fear, it was excitement, real adrenaline-rushing excitement. A little bit of anxiety, but that’s a good thing. That full-house at the O2 gave me so much confidence. The excitement of seeing all those people come into the place, getting into their seats, already soaking up the atmosphere and getting into the spirit of it . . . ah, amazing. In the minutes before the show the adrenaline was pumping so hard, I was absolutely focused. Matt, Nick Jonas, who played Marius, and Sam Barks, who was Éponine, came into my dressing-room and we all stood in a circle and put our arms round each other. And walking out for the first time and seeing that crowd was something else, a real fiery moment. And once I started I was so into my performance, the audience response barely registered, I didn’t quite hear it. Totally lost in what I was doing.

  I knew that ‘Bring Him Home’ would be my moment, the golden key. I knew that was it. ‘Boy needs a song!’ It’s incredible, how that song came to me again, after our false alarm with the Festival of Remembrance. We knew that was the one, but it disappeared, and we didn’t think of it again until Cameron Mackintosh knocked on the door. And it is such a spiritual song, it’s so special. When Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil wrote it they must have been excited. They must have known they had something special. And it was written less than three weeks before the show opened in London in 1985. Claude-Michel wrote the music in rehearsals, inspired by Colm Wilkinson’s falsetto, and Herbert Kretzmer was really stumped with the lyrics, he didn’t know what words he could fit to these three syllable lines. Then John Caird, the co-director, said the melody sounded like a prayer, and Herbert wrote it overnight. It is a prayer, it’s actually called ‘The Prayer’, it’s not officially called ‘Bring Him Home’, and I treat it as such every time I sing it. I pray. That’s what makes it work.

/>   And just before I sang it at the O2 that night, I prayed for real. I’d made my entrance onto the barricade, sent Javert off, fired the gun and walked around to the back of the stage. This was the moment I’d been waiting for. From the day I heard it was going to be at the O2, I’d thought, ‘How can I stand on that stage in front of nineteen thousand people and sing ‘Bring Him Home’? How can I do it?’ And the whole period of time after that had culminated in that moment. That was what I was gearing up for. And what did I do? I switched off. I didn’t focus on it. I got out of sight behind a little barricade, sipped a bit of water and dropped to my knees. And I prayed, I literally prayed, prayed like crazy. ‘Please give me the strength to get through this song. Give me the help to do this song justice.’ And then I asked Dad for help. ‘Give us a hand, Dad.’ I always used to say that when he was alive. ‘Gis a hand, Dad.’ And he always would. He always would.