February 22 - Lea Salonga

On this day, in 1971, Maria Lea Carmen Imutan Salonga was born in Ermita, Manila, Philippines. The first six years of Lea's life were spent i the upper class City of Angeles (her father owned a shipping company). Shortly after the family moved to Manila, she made her professional debut in a Repertory Philippines production of The King and I. Two years later, she was playing the title role in Annie and by the time she was 17, had appeared in a dozen shows as varied as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Paper Moon and The Fantasticks. Just that would be enough to make Lea a Superteen but there is, of course, more.

Image courtesy leasalonga.com

In 1981, Lea's ten at this point, she recorded her first album, Small Voice. It reached gold status. I don't know what you were doing at ten, but I was too busy watching Saturday morning cartoons to make my gold record (at least that's what I'm telling myself). The success of Small Voice gave Lea the opportunity to have her own musical television show, Love, Lea, from 183-85. After her show finished its run, she became part of the Thursday cast (different casts performed on different days) of the popular variety show That's Entertainment when it debuted in 1986. Now, you could be forgiven for thinking that one girl couldn't possibly do more. You'd be wrong but you'd be forgiven.

Somehow, around the stage shows and television gigs, Lea also appeared in Filipino films like Tropang Bulitit, Ninja Kids and Pik Pak Boom. Along the way she earned a FAMAS Award nomination (it's like a Filipino Oscar) and won three Aliw Awards (think of something like a Tony). She began opening for acts like Menudo and Stevie Wonder when they came through Manila. Then, at the age of 17, she released her second album, Lea, and it went multi-platinum. So what does a wildly successful Filipino actress/singer do for an encore? She becomes a wildly successful international actress/singer. Duh.

Image courtesy t2conline.com

To be fair, Lea hadn't intended on extending her career past her teens. She was a biology major at Ateneo de Manila University studying for a career in medicine when a new musical came along and changed her plans. The producers of Les Mis were mounting an update of Puccini's Madame Butterfly but had run into a major problem: they couldn't find a young Asian woman in all of England who could handle the demands of their show. They began a worldwide search, asked Lea to audition and she blew them away. She originated the role of Kim in Miss Saigon on London's West End in 1989 and I don't know of the British capitol has ever recovered. After two years of dazzling European audiences, Lea and her co-star, Jonathan Pryce, crossed the Atlantic to open the show on Broadway. All told, Lea won a Laurence Olivier Award, a Drama Desk Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award and became the first Asian woman to ever win a Tony for her performance in Miss Saigon.

Image copyright Disney

Lea became a Disney princess in 1992 (or at least the singing part of a Disney princess) when she sang for Jasmine in Aladdin.

And here we pause while I climb up on this soap box I just happened to find laying around. I can understand when you cast someone in a musical who has the star power you need to make a go of your picture but not the vocal chords, so you have someone who can sing, but can't necessarily act, take care of the soaring vibrato. What I cannot understand is when you hire a virtually unknown actor who can't sing to be in a musical and then relegate someone who can do both to half a role (or less depending on the spoken/singing ratio). The streets of New York (and Chicago and LA and any other place you can mention) are literally crawling with unknowns who can sing and act your socks off (and will be willing to do it for scale), so hire one of them for crying out loud. Because let's face it, while a whole lot of Aladdin fans know Lea sang it (and some of them already think she did the whole thing), how many of you can name the actress who spoke for Jasmine (without looking it up)? Exactly. It's Linda Larkin, by the way, and I'm not trying to disparage her performance, I'm just fed up with how things are done in general when it comes to casting musicals (don't even get me started on Russell Crowe).

Image copyright Disney

For the 1993 Academy Awards Ceremony, Lea teamed up with Brad Kane, the voice of Aladdin, to sing the Oscar nominated song A Whole New World (spoiler: it won). She returned to the Disney recording studio again in 1998 to provide (again) the singing voice for the title character in Mulan and it's 2004 sequel. She graciously continues to sing for both Jasmine and Mulan in video games, episodes of Sofia the First, and whenever else Disney is willing to cut her a check.

In the decades since Miss Saigon, Lea has basically traveled the world, giving concerts, earning awards for shows in London, Manila and the United States and releasing several more albums, only three of which went platinum (don't feel too bad though, another one also went gold). She's returned to Broadway several times, in 2002 as Mei-Li in Flower Drum Song, in 2016 as part of Allegiance with George Takei and, most recently, as Erzulie in the 2017 revival of Once on This Island. The 48 year old Superteen turned Princess turned International Sensation shows no signs of slowing down and I can't wait to hear where she turns up next. Happy Birthday, Lea!