Cirque du Soleil is the brainchild of French-Canadian Guy Laliberte, now 51 and a billionaire, when he was 21 years old.
Always interested in busking (street performing), as a youth in Quebec City he learned to play the accordion and harmonica and to walk on stilts. He quit college to tour Europe for a year, where he learned to eat fire.
Returning to Quebec, with two friends he founded a small group of performers called Les Échassiers (literally "wading birds"; in slang, "stiltwalkers"). This evolved into a summer circus faire that became a financial success the third year, 1982.
In 1983, the Canadian government gave Laliberte and his troupe a $1.5 million grant to perform in 1984 at Quebec's 450th anniversary celebration of the discovery of Canada by Jacques Cartier. This was the first Cirque du Soleil production.
Though problems bogged down the initial shows, after the end of the summer season, Laliberte wrangled more money out of the government and hired the head of the National Circus School to advance his vision of a contemporary circus with the performances following a story line, the performers doing double duty as stage hands, the live musical score playing a prominent role, and no circus rings or performing animals. Laliberte also hired Franco Dragone from the National Circus School, who instilled elements of music, dance, and improvisation into the performances.
Financial troubles, however, continued to plague the seminal Cirque, keeping it on the edge of bankruptcy for half a decade. Laliberte managed to stave it off through the largesse of the government and the donation of public-relations services, which led, indirectly, to a gig at the Los Angeles Art Festival in 1987.
It might be apocryphal, but the story goes that Cirque was in such dire financial straits that if the L.A. performances hadn’t been a commercial success, there wasn’t enough money to pay for the troupe to return to Canada. Luckily, attendance was strong and the return fares were covered.
In 1989, with Cirque still under water financially, Franco Dragone designed the show Nouvelle Experience, which debuted in May 1990 and finally put the troupe in the black. In its three and a half years, 1.3 million people attended the show; the tour ended in 1993 in a temporary theater in the parking lot of the Mirage in Las Vegas.
Steve Wynn also hired Cirque to put on the permanent show at Treasure Island when it opened in late 1993. Mystère debuted on Christmas Day 1993. Reportedly, Wynn was unhappy with the gloomy ambience of the show and demanded changes, which Dragone and Laliberte resisted. Ultimately, they were proved correct; the show was a smash success and has been playing TI for the past 17 years.
The rest, of course, is history. Cirque opened O, Zumanity, KÀ, LOVE, Criss Angel BeLIEve, and Viva Elvis in Las Vegas, as well as numerous other shows performed elsewhere, both as permanent productions and traveling shows. Today, Cirque is still privately owned, with Laliberte holding 95% of the estimated $1.2 billion equity in the company.
Laliberte is one of "680 self-made billionaires in the world," according to Forbes. He’s quite a colorful character in his own right. He's a skilled poker player who finished fourth in the 2007 World Poker Tour. He also became Canada's first private space explorer on September 30, 2009, when he ponied up a reported $35 million to become the seventh paying space tourist, blasting off in a Russian Soyuz spaceship for the 21st mission to the International Space Station, where he spent 11 days with the aim of raising awareness for the ONE DROP Foundation, which aspires to bring clean drinking water to everyone and teach principles of sustainability.
