By Steve Friess, Photographs: Tomas Muscionico

very so often, Benoît Jutras heads back to his native Montreal to visit with his old buddies from the Montreal Conservatory of Music. They're all what he calls "serious" musicians, the sort he planned to be way back in the mid-1980s when his love of music meant he was destined to struggle financially in order to toil honorably as a contemporary classical composer. Although his friends always tell him how happy they are for his mammoth success, Jutras says he wonders at those moments if they think he's something of a sellout.

It's an interesting choice of words–"sellout"–because, indeed, the composer has been instrumental in the runaway sellout success of the two most prosperous productions in Vegas history, Cirque du Soleil's Mystère and O. Yet, somehow, the 41-year-old still has the itch to prove that he can produce respectable, "serious" music for, of all unlikely places, the Las Vegas Strip.

And so here comes his score to Le Rêve, the virtually sure-thing blockbuster opening at the Wynn Las Vegas resort created by fellow Cirque du Soleil defector Franco Dragone. In this composition, he gets his chance to write what he calls a more "theatrical" score than the abstract sequences that Cirque required. Hedging on specifics because the show remains strictly under wraps until its May debut, he nonetheless describes the music as "a blend of classical and pop" that marries his long-ago roots as a "serious" composer with the necessity to create something with mass Vegas-style appeal. "It's going to be, if not my best, one of my best," gushes the constantly grinning French-Canadian hipster leaning away from his Starbucks latte to stroke his sandy-colored soul patch.

Jutras insists this production is not a Cirque du Soleil knockoff. Le Rêve–French for "the dream"–does away with the crazy, colorful costumes, goes lighter on the acrobatics, and offers what Jutras says is the closest thing he has written to pop music. He can even see some of the tracks getting real radio play–if not on Top 40, then at least on the world-beat stations.

Still, some Cirque-ular similarities seem inevitable. As with his Cirque experiences–all of which took place alongside Dragone as creator–the composer isn't any more clued in to Dragone's intent than anyone else. The music, to some extent, is one of many interpretations of the action, Jutras says. "I understand where Franco wants to go, but I'm just like the public in that it's my interpretation. I could ask for more information, but I wouldn't get a lot."

One reason Jutras is so eager to see Le Rêve become his most acclaimed effort as well as the first major non-Cirque spectacle to succeed on the Strip in years is because of the less-than-happy way that his association with Cirque ended. Jutras spent more than a year writing the score for the latest Cirque creation, Kà at the MGM Grand, only to have Cirque founder Guy Laliberté fire him in April 2004 when their creative visions failed to mesh. That outcome was difficult for Jutras after all those years and major triumphs with so many Cirque shows.

"I thought I would go more into a filmic type of music, but they were more interested in following the action than following the story," explains Jutras, noting that he wanted to offer a more coherent score for Kà because it was the first Cirque show with a clear narrative. "I wanted to follow the emotions of the story, but I was not able to capture what Guy wanted, and so we decided not to work together. I was sad, but once I saw Kà I understood why they didn't keep me. It's really an impressive show"...

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