A new production of Les Miserables with one of the best casts ever assembled will come to Bristol next year as part of a 25th anniversary tour.

The Bristol Hippodrome and theatre producer Sir Cameron Mackintosh will bring the famous musical to the city in July.

Sir Cameron, 63, is arguably the most successful and powerful theatrical producer in the world and is the brains – and heart – behind such hit shows as Cats, The Phantom of the Opera and Mary Poppins.

"Nobody has seen this production," Sir Cameron said of the show. "It's completely new. It has been completely redesigned and doesn't look anything like the versions your readers would have seen either in London or on tour before."

The theatre impresario, who says he knew that he wanted to become a producer since seeing the musical Salad Days as an eight-year-old, lives in Somerset.

Based on the 1862 Victor Hugo novel of the same name, Les Misérables is set during the 1832 French Uprising and follows the intertwining stories of a cast of characters as they struggle for redemption and revolution.

The show's magnificent score includes the songs, I Dreamed a Dream, On My Own, Stars, Bring Him Home and One Day More.

John Owen-Jones will star as Jean Valjean, Earl Carpenter as Javert and Pop Idol runner-up Gareth Gates as Marius in this exciting new production that boasts spectacular new designs inspired by the paintings of Victor Hugo.

"You've got a great cast coming to the Hippodrome – one of the best casts we've ever had for Les Mis. I saw the first 20 minutes of the new show a couple of days ago and it's looking great. I think there are gong to be a few nice surprises in there," said Sir Cameron. "What's really fascinating is that the new design by Matt Kinley has been drawn from the paintings of Victor Hugo himself. So not only has he provided a cracking story, I'm hoping he has provided the inspiration for some cracking scenery."

He first became involved with Les Misérables in October 1982. Four years earlier, the Victor Hugo classic had been adapted into a French language concept album by composer Claude-Michel Schönberg and lyricist Alain Boublil and a colleague brought a copy to Sir Cameron's office.

"He asked if I was interested in producing a show," explained Sir Cameron. "He said anyone mad enough to have brought TS Elliot's poems on Cats to the stage wouldn't just throw this idea out of the window.

"I took the album and a few days later I listened to it and by the fourth track I just thought 'Wow. This is something very special and different'. I knew it was a difficult story, and to be honest I hadn't read the novel, but my memory of the story, which came from one of the over 30 films made of it, came flooding back through the music. I thought 'I must do this'."

Performers and audience members alike have been deeply moved by the Les Misérables experience. With each new cast and each new audience, the power and the magic of the show continues to grow.

"I never thought it would be a hit," admitted Sir Cameron. "I thought the most we would get out of the show, if it really came together, was two years. It seemed to me that this was a musical that was even more serious than Evita in its subject matter.

"Even Evita, which had been a wonderful success, only ran for four years.

"The fact that it has become the most performed musical in the world is astonishing to me. However in hindsight, which is always easier to have, it undoubtedly has the greatest single story and the strongest characters and plot of any musical ever written."

Sir Cameron's passion and devotion to musical theatre, and Les Misérables in particular, shines through.

"I'm often asked what are the highlights of my unbelievably long career – I'm getting old now – and Les Misérables would certainly be jostling in the top three," he adds.

"I remember watching the production at the Barbican on opening night, when nobody knew what the fate of the show would be.

"You felt like you were witnessing something quite extraordinary in the way that both sides of the proscenium arch were in communion in this emotional story. I knew that I would never see anything quite like that again."

The international tour commences in the UK at the Wales Millennium Centre next month where it broke all box office records in the theatre's history.

"We are completely sold out in Cardiff, in Birmingham and in Manchester," adds Sir Cameron.

"So nobody can get tickets anywhere unless they come to the Bristol Hippodrome, which incidentally is one of my favourite theatres.

Tickets for Les Misérables go on general sale from Thursday, December 3, at 10am.

The show will run at the Bristol Hippodrome from Tuesday, July 13 to Saturday, August 7, 2010. Tickets cost £16-£46.50 with concessions available for certain performances.

Tickets for groups of 10 and over and Livecard go on sale from Monday, November 30, at 10am, and go on general sale from Thursday, December 3, at 10am.