BIO
Peter Karrie’s voice has been showcased in many of the greatest theatrical successes in contemporary musical theatre, the highlight of which must be his highly acclaimed portrayal of The Phantom in Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber’s record breaking musical 'The Phantom of the Opera'.
Peter first played The Phantom at Her Majesty’s Theatre, London before going on to play the role in Toronto, Singapore, Hong Kong, Vancouver and the Millennium tour of Great Britain, covering Southampton, Bradford and Manchester.
His performances have been reviewed as “definitive” and have earned him the title of “The World’s Most Popular Phantom” on two separate occasions (as voted for by The Worldwide Phantom Appreciation Society). Peter has also been acknowledged by The Really Useful Group and The Cameron Mackintosh Organisation as being the longest serving ‘Phantom’ of all time with over 2750 credited performances, as announced at the recent ‘Phantom of the Opera’ 25th anniversary celebration at the Royal Albert Hall, London.
Peter’s other stage credits are as follows:
He originated the Che role in ‘Evita’ for the first national tour of Britain.
Peter played the role of Jean Valjean in Les Miserables for more than three and a half years at London’s Palace Theatre reprising the same role several years later and then reprising it for a third time after that. He was once again reunited with the role in 1997 taking part in a spectacular open air concert in front of 15 000 people at Cardiff Castle.
He was an original member of the cast of Chess, eventually taking over from Murray Head as The American (Freddy Trumper).
Peter’s first West End production was in Ray Cooney’s Fire Angel. This was soon followed by another short lived production called James Dean. He also created the role of John Blackthorn for James Clavell’s Shogun in Washington and on Broadway, New York.
One of his all time favourite roles was as Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar (at the Palace Theatre).
In 2004 Peter played Daddy Warbucks in Annie. In early 2005 he created the role of the fire-and-brimstone preacher The Reverend Peter Price in the brand new, all Welsh musical Amazing Grace. This was followed in the summer of 2005 with an out of town run as Fagin in a Cameron Mackintosh production of Oliver!
In February 2006 he performed, once again to great critical acclaim, as Don Quixote in the very demanding and complex musical Man of La Mancha at the Cork Opera House. In the summer of 2006 he performed the role of Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. This was followed by a second tour of Amazing Grace, once again playing the stand out role of The Reverend Peter Price.
2007 saw Peter creating yet another role in the brand new musical ‘The Contender’ (A life story of boxing legend Tommy Farr). His role was that of Tommy’s one-legged trainer Joby ‘Peg leg’ Churchill. In 2009 Peter performed in the first UK tour of ‘The Thorn Birds’. Written by Coleen McCullough and based on her sensational blockbuster book and television series of the same name. Peter played the role of Cardinal Di Contini Verchese.
Peter has also hosted, for two consecutive years, his own BBC Wales television chat show called ‘Peter Karrie… Unmasked’. In addition to his newest album, 'Standing Alone', Peter has four other CDs on general release – ‘Theatrically Yours’, ‘Peter Karrie – Unmasked’ (live recordings taken from his BBC television series of the same name), ‘The Impossible Dream’ and ’On the Other Side of Love’. All are available on Amazon and iTunes, and can be accessed via Peter’s official web site www.peterkarrie.com