Beautiful Girls:Felciano can't "remember not playing the violin," a skill he's been honing since age five. "Then the piano and bass and guitar and all of those things I learned basically when puberty hit because it became very clear to me that playing the violin was not, like…the way in to getting girls," he laughs.

In Comes Company: Felciano headed east after high school for Yale where he saw his first musical, a production of She Loves Me featuring future Broadway star Melissa Errico. "And the second one I saw—but didn't really see because I was playing violin in the pit for it—was Sweeney Todd," he explains with a smile. "It starred my friend Asa Somers. That was the first musical I ever really fell in love with. It was just so intelligent."

Anyone Can Whistle (or Act): "At that point I wasn't an actor at all," Felciano continues. Instead, he moved to New York for a job on Wall Street, playing in rock bands at night to satisfy his artistic urges. When the bank wanted to transfer him to an office in Connecticut, Felciano decided it was time to make a change. "I quit and then— to satisfy all my artsy friends and as a sign of defiance—I shaved my head." While waiting for some inspiration (and for his hair to grow back), the boho boy paid the bills with graphic design and consulting work. "Then one night I was in this bar with Melissa," he says coyly, "and a casting director saw her with me and called her up the next day and said, ‘Who's that guy you were with and can he sing?' And so she—being lovely—said, ‘He's awesome!' and then called me and said ‘OK, you have this audition for this new Andrew Lloyd Webber/Hal Prince mega-musical. I was like, ‘I hate musicals. Wah wah wah,' and she said, ‘Shut up, you don't know what you want to do with your life anyway. Just go.'" Despite having not an acting credit to his name, Felciano auditioned for Hal Prince and landed a gig in the American premiere of Whistle Down the Wind.

Move On: So how will Felciano ever top Sweeney, an experience that he speaks of so passionately? "That is a very good question," he says. "Basically, now I'm just trying to savor every time that we do it, because I'm in my favorite musical…on Broadway…while Stephen Sondheim is still with us and able to contribute. This is by far the high point of anything I've done."

See Manoel Felciano in Sweeney Todd at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre, 230 West 49th Street. Click for tickets and more information.