The recent, belated release of a CD of highlights from the original London cast album of Les Misérables gives me an excuse to rant about something I noticed a while ago: Cameron Mackintosh, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and other movers and shapers behind Brit musicals and cast albums apparently have so little respect for performers that they sometimes exclude their names from CD covers.
I'm telling you, it's weird. To learn the names of the singers heard on the Lez Miz disc, you have to search the enclosed booklet; not one performer is identified anywhere on the outside packaging. The same is true of the two-CD original cast recording of The Phantom of the Opera -- although, oddly enough, the highlights disc does credit Michael Crawford, Sarah Brightman, Steve Barton, et al.
Decca's most recent recording of Jesus Christ Superstar is even more peculiar in this regard: Not only does the outer packaging fail to list the cast, it doesn't even specify which production this is or when and where it took place! (I believe what we have here is the cast album of the mid-'90s London revival that later moved to Broadway for a brief run.)
Yes, I know: certain producers (and composers) deliberately downplay the contributions of performers on the theory that it makes better business sense if "the show is the star," rather than the people in it. But to actually hide the names of singers on a recording? If I may quote Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins, "That's going a bit too far, don't you think?"
For the record (as it were), the major soloists on the London Les Miz highlights disc are Colm Wilkinson as Jean Valjean, Roger Allam as Javert, Michael Ball as Marius, Frances Ruffelle as Eponine -- oh, and some unknown named Patti LuPone as Fantine. Surely, there was no point in advertising any of those names on the CD package!\
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