Leading Man: Best of Broadway ~ Hampson

Thomas Hampson (Artist) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (May 21, 1996)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Angel Records / EMI
• ASIN: B000002SLA
• Also Available in: Audio Cassette
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #196,266 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Very Warm For May: All The Things You Are

2. LES MISERABLES: Bring Him Home

3. THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA: The Music Of The Night

4. Carousel: Soliloquy

5. Gigi

6. The Pajama Game: Hey There

7. NINE: Unusual Way

8. Merrily We Roll Along: Not A Day Goes By

9. The Secret Garden: How Could I Ever Know?

10. Beauty And The Beast: If I Can't Love Her

11. Camelot: If Ever I Would Leave You

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A surprisingly good collection from Hampson, September 26, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Leading Man: Best of Broadway ~ Hampson (Audio CD)

Opera singers usually come off sounding stiff, pretentious and completely miscast when they attempt musical theater pieces. Which was why I decided to give this collection of Broadway standards a listen with a good deal of trepidation. However, I was very pleasantly surprised by how good Hampson was on this album. His lush baritone works wonders on songs like "Bring Him Home", "If Ever I Would Leave You" and "Soliloquy". He also manages to bring something new to his rendition of "Gigi". And then there's the highlight of this album - Hampson's gloriously thrilling take on a wonderful arrangement of "Unusual Way". Worth the price of the disk for this track alone.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The last and most spectacular of Hampson's crossover recordings, July 17, 2006

By 

Santa Fe Listener (Santa Fe, NM USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Leading Man: Best of Broadway ~ Hampson (Audio CD)

I haven't heard Thomas Hampson in any solo crossover work since this CD came out in 1996. that's baffling, because this is certainly a spectacular experience in world-class singing applied to musical comedy. Hampson's variety of tone, including a stretch of falsetto in "Bring Him Home" from Les Miserables and 'Music of the Night' from Phantom, is nothing less than stunning (I played this CD for a famous soprano who was visiting Santa Fe, and she was torn between jealousy and awed admiration). A good deal of the music lies in the tenor range at the very frontier of Hampson's voice, but even there he does wonders.

For some reason Hampson's crossover work gets pans at Amazon, and it's true that you have to love Broadway to enter into this album. Hampson clearly loves everything from Disney ('If I Can't Love Her' from Beauty and the Beast) to cult musicals like Nine and The Secret Garden. Nothing is less than superbly done, leaving me to wonder why there has never been a follow-up.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A leading man, August 4, 2001

By 

"puccinigirl" (Shawnee, Oklahoma United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Leading Man: Best of Broadway ~ Hampson (Audio CD)

This is a superb album of broadway classics. Hampson is a fabulous singer with a seemingly perfect technique and a wonderful interpretive style. Although Hampson is a leading man in the opera world, he has excellent command of this style of music as well. He also throws in a few pieces that are normally sung by soprano, but he handles them nicely. No complaints about this album. Try it and you'll enjoy a wonderful listening experience.