Davis Gaines

Davis Gaines (born January 21, 1954, Orlando, Florida) is an American stage actor and baritone. He has performed as The Phantom in the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical The Phantom of the Opera over 2,000 times, on Broadway, on tour, in Los Angeles, and in San Francisco. (He had previously played Raoul in the Broadway production.) In the last location, he won the Bay Area Critics' Award for Best Actor. He performed the role for a Phantom segment for the Kennedy Center Honors in 1994.

He originated the lead role of The Man in Whistle Down the Wind (1996). Gaines was also the singing voice of Chamberlain in The Swan Princess (1994). He guested in "Murder in White", a 1993 episode of Murder, She Wrote. He was also a musical guest star for Broadway on Ice, a touring ice show with live music. He was in the original Off-Broadway production of Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins as an understudy for the roles of the Balladeer and Charles Guiteau. In 2000, he was in a concert version of The Frogs opposite Nathan Lane and Brian Stokes Mitchell at the Library of Congress. Gaines played the role of Anthony Hope in Sondheim's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street in concert, alongside George Hearn and Patti LuPone.

He also played the title role in a regional production of Sweeney Todd at the Bob Carr Theater. Other regional credits include King Arthur and Lancelot in productions of Camelot, Tony in West Side Story, Javert in Les Misérables, Fagin in Oliver!, Joseph Pulitzer in Newsies, Juan Perón in Evita, Harold Hill in The Music Man, Don Quixote / Miguel de Cervantes in Man of La Mancha, Robert in Company, Joe Hardy in Damn Yankees, Billy Bigelow in Carousel, Cornelius Hackl in Hello, Dolly!, Clifford Bradshaw in Cabaret, Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls, Joseph in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and Old Soldier / Judge Roan in Parade at the Lincoln Center.[1]

One of his first jobs was as a costumed character at Walt Disney World theme park;[2] as a high school student, he played Pinocchio character J. Worthington Foulfellow.[3]