Les Miserables En Français--It's so much better!

Because I have a pubertal child interested in Musical Theater and in learning French, I downloaded the 1991 French version of the originally French musical, Les Miserables, with music by Claude-Michel Shonberg (can't get those umlauts in there, sorry) and lyrics by Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel. 

Hey, two birds, one stone. (Sounds like a particularly appropriate metaphor for Les Miserables for some reason.) 

Now, I am not a fan of Les Miserables, the musical. I lump it in there with the Andrew Lloyd Webber school of musical, lots of spectacle, hard to sing, storming barricades, flying helicopters and falling chandeliers. Meh. 

And then, I hear the score for Les Miserables in French. My God. It's so much better. No more lyrics straining to fit the words and story. The music feels so right for the words. Even the sounds of the words fit better. Maybe my problem was just with those damned British (Cockney, BBC Narrator) accents? 


(Love those sulfurous greens, don't you? I wonder if that's supposed to be Sheele's Green, one of the literally deadly green dyes that were popular around this time?) 

And, yes, since this is on stage and not in a film, where the director decided to show us how absolutely stupid and futile it is to lose so many lives manning a barricade blocking nothing, since the rest of a city has already surrendered.



At any rate, I highly recommend listening to Les Miserables en Français. Especially if you are planning to storm some barricades of your own, as we are doing today in our fair city. Alons y!