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So... I went to see the musical with my Mom on Sunday night. I've never read the book (nor even the Classics Illustrated or Cliffs Notes). Nor had I seen any of the films. I've since watched the Liam Neeson one.
Have any of you read it? Is it worth reading? The musical absolutely floored me. It was weird, because the character who really broke my heart wasn't even included in the film version I saw (Eponine).
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I loved the book. It may be too long for some readers and there are some sections that are description, exposition, history rather than plot. For example, in the midst of a cliff hanging plot twist, there are 20 pages on the history of the Paris sewers.
It is a bit of an excercise in delayed gratification, but well worth it.
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I thought the book had a really, really slow start, and it's a bit of a rough read (it's just long and heavy) in some patches, but I'm glad I read it.
Hugo is like Tolkien mixed with Herodotus but with better and more dialogue.
The musical is easily my favorite in all of musicaldom. I was under the impression that it wasn't currently touring, unless you saw some sort of unoffocial or non-traveling production Lisa. Where did you see it at? The music is stunning, the story is compelling and reaches across time, and every time I've seen it, the actors have been captivating.
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Les Miserables is the most powerful work of fiction I've ever read. I draw more of my personal philosophy from that book than all of the other fiction books I've read.
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There's a place north of Chicago called the Lincolnshire Marriot Resort. They have a theater in the round that does some of the most amazing productions. I've seen Thoroughly Modern Millie, State Fair, Brigadoon and Footloose there before this. Every production I've seen there has been beyond superb. Footloose, btw, is a much better stage musical than it was a movie. Same with Thoroughly Modern Millie, only more so.
Valjean was played by John Cudia, who is apparently (according to the Playbill, anyway) the only guy to have played both Valjean and the Phantom from Phantom of the Opera on Broadway.
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The book was great. Definitely some skim-over places, but it doesn't lose anything for it. It's like reading the bible and skimming over the 'begats'.
The musical is also incredible. The Liam Neeson film, however, is absolute, unadulterated poop.
Geoffrey Rush was good in it. But, being Javert, I would say that.
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quote:Originally posted by Scott R: Les Miserables is the most powerful work of fiction I've ever read. I draw more of my personal philosophy from that book than all of the other fiction books I've read.
So, you'll probably hate it.
Heh. It's interesting, because Victor Hugo was Rand's favorite novelist. But I suspect they may have differed philosophically.
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quote:Originally posted by Javert: The musical is also incredible. The Liam Neeson film, however, is absolute, unadulterated poop.
Are there any good film versions? I understand that there's been talk of trying to do a film version of the musical, but it's never gotten off the ground.
I found Javert, at least in the musical, to be morally complex. The whole story seemed morally complex. I mean... I know more than most people how your past can haunt you. But I felt like Valjean was as extreme in his mercy as Javert was in his justice.
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Was it just like the usual play, in that the center of the stage was a big rotating circle thing? I almost wonder how they'd do some of the scenes without the stage rotating.
I'm surprised they haven't made a more recent, better, movie version. To be honest, I think I'd want it to be made of mostly British actors, but, I fear some of the more popular actors being involved with it. I think Chicago was great, much to my surprise, and it's possible for actors to be good in musicals, but the singing in Les Mis is a lot more important than in many other musicals. I mean what is the dialogue to singing ratio in Les Mis? Isn't it like 10/90? If that even? The singing is going to be crucial, and the range for some of them is impressive. I just doubt most big name actors would be able to pull it off convincingly.
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Was it just like the usual play, in that the center of the stage was a big rotating circle thing? I almost wonder how they'd do some of the scenes without the stage rotating.
It was in the round, but it didn't rotate.
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: I mean what is the dialogue to singing ratio in Les Mis? Isn't it like 10/90? If that even?
It's through-sung. Everything is sung.
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: The singing is going to be crucial, and the range for some of them is impressive. I just doubt most big name actors would be able to pull it off convincingly.
Though it might be interesting. I wonder which actors are amazing singers that we don't generally hear sing.
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There is a French film called Les Miserables that is about a Jewish family in WWII, and a man who is reading the Hugo novel. I'm a little hazy on the details now. I think he's hiding them, and they introduce him to the book, which he starts reading, and many other things happen, and he sees a lot of parallels between events in his and their lives and the novel. I really liked it. The wife was so gorgeous, even when her hair got all shorn, she looked even more beautiful, and she was so in love with her husband, even though he was a little balding fellow with glasses.
It got me to want to read the book, though I didn't get far enough into the book to actually see any of the main characters that I was aware of. Like, I think there was probably a character who turns out to be Valjean mentioned.
I think my hesitancy to watch the musical is only partly my regular aversion to very popular things -- it also has to do with hearing the story of the priest giving Valjean the candlesticks every week in church for like 2 years.
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How was the scene at the barricade then? In every production I've seen they flip the barricade around to show the back, or the scene at the gate on Rue Plumet where they flip the gate around. I guess some of it is just showey, but I always got the impression that it'd be hard to do some of those scenes without it.
quote:It's through-sung. Everything is sung.
Ah, yeah I thought it might be, but I wasn't 100% positive, thought there might have been a sentence or two here and there, so I thought I'd sort of add that cavaet. And I too wonder who might be a good singer that we've never heard. I was impressed by Jonathon Rhys Meyers' singing in August Rush, I was a little blown away by it. I just hope they'd give the singing ability priority over pretty much everything else.
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Les Mis is amazing. I saw it almost 20 years ago (in Chicago =) and I still listen to the sound track all the time. And yeah, Eponine is by far the most interesting character. At least for me. She's the only one I really identify with.
I loved the musical so much I tried to read the book, but I got bogged down really early. I should probably try to read it again now that I'm older and have more patience.
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Les Miserables is positively one of the most influential, and thought provoking books I have ever read. I take great pride in the fact that whenever I and my other book-aholic friends enter into discussion on great literature I can claim to have read the whole thing many times over.
There is alot of exposition and character background, (I think roughly 70 pages on the Bishop who gives him the candlesticks, but I never found it tedious or dull.
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The 70 pages of background on the bishop is what turned me off the first time. I thought I was reading the wrong book at first.
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Spencer W. Kimball (President of the mormon church in the 70s) considered the novel Les Miserables to be the greatest book outside of the church's standard works (Bible, Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price).
I personally like the 1978 TV adaption with Richard Jordan as Jean Valjean.
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How was the scene at the barricade then? In every production I've seen they flip the barricade around to show the back, or the scene at the gate on Rue Plumet where they flip the gate around. I guess some of it is just showey, but I always got the impression that it'd be hard to do some of those scenes without it.
They actually lowered the barricade scenery from above.
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There's a miniseries with John Malkovich as Javert. Has anyone seen that? I'm trying to decide whether it's worth the time, too.
And I think I'm going to read the book. As soon as I finish the Sword of Truth series. I just started the 5th book today.
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I never actually saw the musical, but I saw a tape of it in fifth grade and I can still remember the incredible power of the music.
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I also love the book, and read every word the first time. What I skip over in re-readings is the part about the battle of Waterloo. Completely irrelevant to the story.
The thing is, all of Hugo's books have a big section in them that are completely irrelevant to the story. I believe they had a lot to do with the politics of the time they were written, but that part just doesn't translate to modern times. So you should feel no guilt about skimming over some stuff. But it's definitely worth a read.
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quote:The Liam Neeson film, however, is absolute, unadulterated poop.
I disagree. It only tells a part of the story, but I thought it was well done. I do wish they'd have let us know that Gavroche and his sons were all Thenardiers. And included Eponine. But that would have been a lot of ground to cover.
And for that matter, leaving them out also got rid of the ridiculous coincidences that popped up everywhere.
I had a thread a few months ago about how I was punishing myself by reading an unabridged version. Boy, does it need abridging, especially when it would have sufficed to say "(insert Marius' friend's name here) ranted on about pointless things for 4 hours," instead of writing out the whole monologue in longhand and making us read it. The guy takes "show don't tell" to an extreme!
And then there was the whole history of Waterloo, just to introduce a character.
But I repeat myself: It was an OK story, but it's main importance was to give French history a living perspective. If you don't care about French history, most of it is a waste of time.
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I absolutely loved the novel of Les Miserables. There are definitely things that can be skimmed over (the bit on Waterloo being a perfect example), but mostly it is superb. I started reading it out of a sense of duty and LOVED it.
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Basicly you are reading the first draft of a "throw everything in, including the kitchen sink" mashup novelizaton. Hugo got paid by the word to write newspaper serials, so there was a lot of incentive to pad things out to the MAX. And negative incentive to edit anything in a manner which would tighten either the writing or the storytelling.
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And therefore, like Dickens', his books are better read abridged. (Which I realize is heresy, but so be it.) There are better and worse abridged editions, naturally.
[This made more sense before the post prior was edited.]
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This is my husband's favourite musical. I've only seen it once and I loved it, and I love the music. I read the book very recently and it made me realise just how good the musical was. The book is also wonderful - I really liked the description of the bishop and also Valjean's relationship with Cosette. I skipped over the digressions though. We are seeing the musical again on Monday and I can't wait!!!
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But you openly admitted your heresy, plus once the inquisition starts torturing you, you're sure to give them the names of people who skipped over sections.
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quote:Originally posted by Lisa: There's a miniseries with John Malkovich as Javert. Has anyone seen that? I'm trying to decide whether it's worth the time, too.
I saw it; I remember it being very disappointing. Not as disappointing as Malkovich's Kurz in "Heart of Darkness," but pretty bad, nonetheless.
I listened to the Broadway soundtrack in high school, liked it.
I tried reading the book; couldn't finish it. Got to Valjean and Cosette living in the nunnery. Didn't find it overwhelming, but perhaps that was just because I only read the first 1/3 or so.
I saw the musical on Broadway; liked it as much as I expected to from listening to the cds so often.
And I found the Liam Neeson movie, not poop exactly but pretty uninspired. I remember liking Geoffrey Rush's final exit, though.
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I'm afraid that Les Miserables has ruined all other musicals for me. It was the greatest emotional experience that I had ever had at any live show. Now I go to musicals, foolishly hoping for them to hit me like a brick to the teeth the way Les Mis did. Nothing does, because no musical can. It is not only the greatest musical ever written, but the best opera in fifty years; possibly longer.
That is what makes it so amazing in my mind. People always call Phantom of the Opera an opera, because it has the word opera in the title, but those who know what opera actually is know that Phantom is not. Les Miserables, however, IS an opera, but is never referred to as such (I am an opera singer myself, FYI). This is because it seems to have become an opera quite by accident. It follows nearly all of the traditions that musical theatre that originally set the genre apart from opera (different voice types, use of microphones, ect.) and yet, through those practices, Schoenberg seems to be searching for the same thing that led the Camarata to invent opera in the first place.
Of course, since the first time I saw Les Mis, I have seen (and been in) numerous operas that I'm sure would have been just as moving, if not for the language barrier. Most operas are extremely hindered by the fact that the audience often isn't fluent in the language being sung, especially with english speakers (which is why I was overjoyed when I heard that Howard Shore would be debuting his first opera this year; we need more operas in english) That's another thing that I love about the precedent that Les Mis is helping to establishing; since it is being translated into numerous languages (something that I find requires some cooperation from the composer to rework some of the music where necessary, like Schoenberg did with this one (the original show was in french)).
Anyway, there's my rant. Yeah, everything about this show is brilliant.
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I saw Les Mis is London, and I'm right there with you Lisa. During "On My Own" I was just staring at her on the stage, completely oblivious to everything around me. Heck, even the thought of that experience is making me get kinda teary eyed. It was simply otherworldly. Me, my sister, and her friend got discount tickets which just so happened to be front row on the first level of the balcony ... Putting me pretty much at eye level with most of the performers. It was one of those experiences which is impossible to duplicate and the memory of it only gets better as time goes on.
My love affair with Les Mis is exacerbated by the fact that I'm my field of study is French history. Or maybe my field of study is French history because of Les Mis ... Regardless, the bottom line is that I love Les Miserables. A dream of mine is to listen to it and also to read the novel in French. I'm getting there, but it's rough. I will prevail though.
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Lisa, you liked Footloose? Huh. I saw the original on Broadway and hated it. So did almost everyone I know who saw it. I wonder if they revamped it - did they have the people spinning on the ropes?
I do love Les Miz, but my favorite book-turned-musical is The Secret Garden.
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quote:Of course, since the first time I saw Les Mis, I have seen (and been in) numerous operas that I'm sure would have been just as moving, if not for the language barrier. Most operas are extremely hindered by the fact that the audience often isn't fluent in the language being sung
I speak Italian fluently.
I am better than the rest of you.
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quote:Originally posted by Mrs.M: Lisa, you liked Footloose? Huh. I saw the original on Broadway and hated it. So did almost everyone I know who saw it. I wonder if they revamped it - did they have the people spinning on the ropes?
Apparently, you aren't the only one who feels that way. This review from the Chicago Tribune starts by saying how horrible the Broadway version was, and how much better this one was.
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What I'd really like to see is a musical adaptation of Atlas Shrugged. I have a feeling that the movie is going to suck, and that a musical is the only way to really get the soul of it across.
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quote:Of course, since the first time I saw Les Mis, I have seen (and been in) numerous operas that I'm sure would have been just as moving, if not for the language barrier. Most operas are extremely hindered by the fact that the audience often isn't fluent in the language being sung
I speak Italian fluently.
I am better than the rest of you.
What do Italians know of love?
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The irony about me speaking Italian fluently is that even so, I don't understand most of what goes on in your given Italian Opera.
Take Turandot, for example. I can understand most of what's going on, because there are songs that are solos, that are fairly standard musically speaking; Nessun Dorma for example. But when the whole cast is singing together, meshing eight different melodies, and the chorus joins in with a ninth? Fuggedaboutit.
I'm comforted by the fact that my Italian friends say they are just as confused. (Keep in mind also, that today's conversational Italian-- which is what I'm fluent in-- is not like the Italian that Puccini was speaking)
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