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The first French musical that became world famous not in the original language, but in English. Sometimes it is not enough to create a talented work, it is also necessary to properly present it to the public. Les Misérables got the chance to become the longest-running musical in history thanks to British producer Cameron Mackintosh. He gave millions of people the opportunity to see the magnificent production and empathize with the difficult fate of Hugo's heroes.

A summary of the musical "Les Misérables" and many interesting facts about this work, read on our page.

Summary

1815, a quarry where convicts work. One of them is Jean Valjean. 19 years ago, he was convicted of stealing bread for his hungry family. Javert, the overseer, brings him news of his release and a yellow outcast passport. Valjean is free, but no one lets a beggar ragamuffin to spend the night. Finally, he finds shelter in the house of the Bishop of Digne. In the morning, in obedience to a diabolical impulse, he steals the candlesticks from him, but the bishop defends him before the police and gives him the stolen. For the former convict, this becomes a lesson in kindness and mercy.

1823. Valjean changed his name in order to settle in Montreil-sur-Mer - now he is Mr. Madeleine, a factory owner and mayor. A scandal erupted at the factory - it turned out that one of the workers, Fantine, had an illegitimate child. The girl is fired. In order to feed her daughter Cosette, who lives with the rude and cruel Thenardier, she becomes a prostitute. Unjustly accused of assaulting a client, she falls into the hands of Javert, who now serves in the police of this city. Valjean takes her out of prison and puts her in a hospital. Dying, Fantine receives from him a promise to take care of her baby. Javert suspects that Madeleine is Valjean, although the latter was recognized as a completely different person and is about to be condemned. Valjean does not allow lawlessness to happen, confesses to a fake identity and flees. He takes Cosette away from Thenardier and hides in a convent.

1832, Paris. The national hero, General Lamarck, is dying, and an uprising is brewing in the streets. Valjean and Cosette arrive in the city. Over the past years, the enemies did not waste time - and now the Thenardier gang and Javert are near. Thenardier's daughter Eponina is secretly in love with the student Marius, and he, having met Cosette on the street, falls in love with her. Lamarck dies, Paris prepares for rebellion. Valjean is about to leave the country, but intercepts a letter from Marius to Cosette and goes to the barricades where the young man is fighting. Meeting Javert there, spying for the authorities, Valjean lets him go. Eponina is one of the first to die, the next day only the wounded Marius and Valjean remain among the rebels. Finding the young man already unconscious, Valjean takes him out through the sewer tunnels. But at the exit they are met by Javert. Obeying an inexplicable inner feeling, he lets his sworn enemy go and, unable to cope with the compassion that has arisen in him, rushes into the Seine. Valjean reveals to Marius that he is a convict who has broken the law and takes a promise from him that Cosette will not find out. However, the girl is told everything by Thenardier, who burst into the celebration on the occasion of her wedding with Marius. Valjean is already preparing to leave this world, and as soon as Cosette has time to say goodbye to him, he leaves with Fantine and Eponine.

A photo:

Interesting Facts

• A new round of popularity was brought to the musical by a simple British housewife Susan Boyle, who in 2009 brilliantly performed Fantine's aria "I Dreamed a Dream" on the TV show Britain's Got Talent. The video of this performance in a few days has collected millions of views on the Internet.
• Schoenberg, Boublil and Mackintosh, 4 years after the release of Les Misérables, presented the world with another successful joint project - the musical Miss Saigon. The production is famous for the fact that a helicopter almost indistinguishable from the real one lands on the stage. The musical ran in London and New York for about 10 consecutive years.

• Each production of Les Misérables features a creative and production team of more than 100 people. Artists wear 392 costumes.
• In 1996, 250 artists of the musical performed at the opening of the World Cup, which was watched live by 400 million people.
• Les Misérables is one of three Broadway centenarians after " cats”and“ The Phantom of the Opera ”by E.L. Webber.

Best numbers

Work Song ("Look down") - convict song (listen)

"I Dreamed a Dream" - Fantine's aria (listen)

"Castle on a Cloud" - little Cosette's aria (listen)

"Do You Hear the People Sing?" - choir at the barricades (listen)

History of creation and productions

Ideas are in the air. Alain Boublil, a French librettist and playwright, visited the British musical Oliver! in the late 1970s, where he saw Gavroche in one of the characters. Following the legendary child from the barricades, Valjean, Fantine, Javert appeared to the writer's inner gaze ... Arriving home, he immediately set to work, offering material to his longtime collaborator, composer Claude-Michel Schoenberg.

In 1980, after two years of work, a concept album was released and the musical was staged at the Palais des Sports in Paris. For three months, the performance was attended by about half a million spectators. In 1983, the concept album fell into the hands of the famous theatrical producer Cameron Mackintosh, who, having become acquainted with the musical, immediately decided to put it on the British stage. For this, a new production team was assembled, Herbert Kretzmer took up the translation of the text into English. The musical has been significantly revised from the first version. On October 8, 1985, Les Misérables was reborn at the London Barbican Theatre.

The creative team that evening experienced unprecedented enthusiasm, the performance was on an emotional upsurge, the audience received the musical superbly. But as soon as Mackintosh read the reviews in the newspapers, he broke into a cold sweat - "dark Victorian melodrama", "meaningless entertainment", "a soap opera instead of classical literature" and other hard-hitting epithets from critics. The next day, the producer anxiously dialed the box office number of the theater, horrified that after such reviews the audience would not buy tickets. The sales manager picked up the phone, surprised how Macintosh managed to get through at all - from the very opening of the box office, the phone did not stop for a minute, and the audience sold out all 5,000 tickets for the next performances in half a day! The audience voted for the musical with their feet.

In 1987, Les Misérables opened on Broadway, where they ran continuously for 16 years. The musical has been translated into 22 languages, including Castilian, Icelandic, Mauritian Creole, Estonian. Performances have been staged in 44 countries and attended by 70 million people. In 1989, the musical was performed outdoors in Sydney in front of 125,000 spectators. Les Misérables has received over 140 different theatrical awards, including Tonys and Grammys. In 1995, the first performer of the role of Jean Valjean, Colm Wilkinson, took part in the concert dedicated to the 10th anniversary of the musical, and the final number was performed by 17 Valjeans from productions from different countries. The 25th anniversary of the performance in 2010 was celebrated on a no lesser scale. The musical has never been performed in Russia.

Screen adaptation of Les Misérables

In 2012, the Hollywood version of Les Misérables was released, created with the direct participation of the authors of the musical. The director was Englishman Thomas Hooper, best known for his work on costume series for the BBC and HBO, as well as the Oscar-winning film The King's Speech! All the artists themselves performed their vocal parts, moreover, the sound was recorded directly on the set, without dubbing. The role of Jean Valjean was played by Hugh Jackman, who had roles in theatrical productions of the musicals Sunset Boulevard, Beauty and the Beast, Oklahoma! For Russell Crowe (Javer), Anne Hathaway (Fantina) and Eddie Redmayne (Marius), this was their first experience in a musical film. Amanda Seyfried (Cosette) previously starred in the musical "Mamma Mia!", The role of the Bishop of Dinj was played by Colm Wilkinson - the first Valjean on the West End and Broadway. Eponina came to the film straight from the theatrical stage - she was played by Samantha Barks, who embodied this image in the London production.

Schoenberg and Boublil wrote a new song specifically for the film, "Suddenly". The picture was a phenomenal success. With a budget of $61 million, Les Misérables brought in over $440 million for its creators! The film won 3 Oscars: Best Supporting Actress (Anne Hathaway), Best Makeup and Hairstyle, Best Sound.

The secret of the success of Les Misérables is that the authors have preserved the main storylines of Hugo's great epic, without sinning against the logic, meaning and spirit of the original source. A complex and multifaceted story is told in an understandable language of human emotions expressed by music. Today it is not a French or British musical, it has gone beyond national identity, becoming the property of world culture and a grandiose creation of the 20th century.

However, he could not have another person suffer for him, it would be contrary to his conscience. And in the fact that Fantine was dying, and he understood that, since she worked at his factory, he was to some extent responsible for her life, he swore to her to save her daughter, the voice of his conscience also sounds. She almost spits in his face, and he kneels before her and says: "I swear that I will save Cosette."

These moments were staged and played very strongly, and therefore they were so contagious and had an unusual effect on the audience. And the youth audience, no matter how it hides behind cynicism, is initially infected with some very positive, positive things. And so the hall thundered with applause, reacting to these scenes. And when Jean Valjean came out to bow, the hall simply groaned. And I believe that the greatest merit of this performance and Borodin is that he raised the power of good to a very high level. (Irma Safarova)

Other heroes of the novel are well known to us: dying of illness and longing for her daughter Fantine (Evgenia Presnikova, Natalya Oleneva), the embittered and greedy wife of Thenardier (Nikolai Kashirin, Viktor Tsymbal, Ninel Ternovskaya, Anna Solovyova), the resilient Gavroche (Tatiana Kuryanova) who tormented the orphan Cosette ), fanatically in love with the republic of Anjolras (Stanislav Kabeshev, Vladimir Rulla) and fanatically in love with life Marius (Yuri Grigoriev). All of them are the French people, oppressed, enduring, but tired of enduring. There are many of them, they do not hide their grief, they rebelled in 1789 and will revolt in 1832.

The people of Victor Hugo are by no means a minor character. Shopkeepers, flower girls, itinerant musicians, the homeless poor, prostitutes and swindlers, thieves and robbed - the whole performance they are on stage with the main characters. They, too, reject a society in which "the sick are punished for illness, the poor for poverty" in a country where "lawlessness, injustice, police terror reign." After all, it is precisely such a social structure that Inspector Javert supports. But this character is not so simple and unambiguous. Javert, behaving like a police bloodhound, cannot be denied greatness. His value system is backed by a true belief in its justice. Therefore, the viewer perceived Javert's suicide tragically, forgiving and even compassionate to him.

Mister Gillenormand, Marius's grandfather, "a royalist, more than the king himself" belongs to this social order. For many years this role was brilliantly played by Mikhail Androsov. The old bourgeois, the enemy of all outcasts, turns out to be nobler and wiser than many. It is he who will come to Valjean in the last minutes of his life.

Gillenormand and Valjean will happily marry their children - Marius and Cosette (Larisa Grebenshchikova, Elena Novikova), and on the same day Valjean will reveal to Marius his difficult hard labor past, hidden from his beloved Cosette for so long. He will leave his daughter a huge dowry - six hundred thousand francs, earned by the honest work of Mr. Madeleine. But the "strange reason" - conscience - will not let him remain the father of the baroness, and he will consider it the only right thing to leave her life. And Baron Marius considers it the only possible thing - that Jean Valjean should never see Cosette again ... Yes, and Cosette, who involuntarily heard her father's confession, probably also seemed to be the only way out. Did the childhood impressions of the convicts she saw so painfully cut into her memory that they overshadowed the image of a loving father? “I will dream about this all my life. People who hate the free, beings you pity and feel disgust for. I would be afraid to touch any of them… Valjean, crushed by life, leaves in the house of Gillenormand all the most precious thing he ever had - Cosette. He has only death ahead of him.

“The magnificent Gillennormand Androsov is a memory for a lifetime. The way he played was so good! The audience believed that on stage was an aristocrat to the tips of his nails, blue-blooded, an aristocrat of aristocrats who despised those who were lower. But when he learns that Jean Valjean brought his wounded grandson from the barricades, that this fugitive convict surpassed everyone and himself in nobility, he does an amazing deed. And his gesture was amazing when he said: "I'm going to him!" “To whom,” asks Marius, “to this convict?” And he says, "Yes!" To thunderous applause, Androsov did this in a way that no one, probably, can do. At that moment, he bowed before the spiritual height of Jean Valjean, and for him any class contradictions ceased to exist, everything went away, there was only the spiritual superiority of man, and that was the performance. (Irma Safarova)

At the end of Victor Hugo's novel, Marius and Cosette ask the dying Jean Valjean for forgiveness for their callousness and selfishness. But the author of the dramatization radically changes the ending, which makes the tragedy of the protagonist a hundred times stronger:

« In the performance, we show the betrayal of Cosette. After overhearing and learning the whole truth about Jean Valjean, she turns away from him. Neither Marius nor Cosette came to ask his forgiveness, they did not begin to shake their family well-being. In Voronov's play, old Valjean is consoled before his death by another old man - Marius' grandfather Gillenormand. (A.Borodin)

“The final scene was absolutely ingeniously solved. When Gillenormand turned to Jean Valjean, who was already dying, if he should call a priest, he replies: “I have him.” The bell sounds again, and Bishop Bienvenue comes out. And with him - all those who left this life during the performance, and with them little Cosette. It was an amazing moment that I still remember, and Borodin's amazing find: it was so accurate, because the girl he saved had left this life, and the adult Cosette is already a completely different person. And with them, Jean Valjean leaves the stage. It was very strong - to a spasm in the throat. (Irma Safarova)

When Jean Valjean died, many in the hall wept. This hero has become spiritually close to many generations of viewers.

"Jean Valjean is a man not of this world,- says today the leading actor Yuriy Luchenko, - he stands out from the ranks of ordinary people very strongly. There aren't any now. If you remember the last words of the play, there is a heavy stone on Valjean's grave to make sure he never gets up. So he didn't get up."

“The stone that lies on his grave, a block of stone, best of all symbolizes the power and scale of this man. And probably no more words are needed. And the repentance of Marius and Cosette is not necessary, because such an ending allows their conscience to be left open. After all, if a person has done something in his life that will later torment him all his life, this is very important for him, because an open conscience creates a person. (Irma Safarova)

Jean Valjean left, and the time has come - the play about this unbending man has also left. In 1998, Les Misérables was decided to be removed from the repertoire. There was general bewilderment: how is such a good and necessary performance filmed? Letters from the audience, requests from the artists rained down, and Alexei Borodin, succumbing to persuasion, a year later, restored the production: “ You can't say it was a mistake. This is a good experience, which showed that we will no longer do this. The resuscitation of the play is not a new life for it. Time passed, and we felt that air was coming out of the performance...
Despite the fact that it was a very big performance in every sense, was a success with the audience, gave rise to many conversations, it had to have an energetic fullness. While it is, the performance is alive. And we must not forget that the repertoire must be updated in the theater, and, consequently, the performance will inevitably be filmed in due time.
In 2001, Les Misérables played for the last time.

They always talk about their favorite performances with pain, with a feeling of great regret and at the same time with a feeling of gratitude. How else can you remember what you loved? Yuri Vasilievich Luchenko, for whom the role of Valjean has become one of the most important and brightest in his acting life, suddenly admits: “ The play still haunts me. It was an unforgettable time of delight and intoxication with rehearsals, overcoming oneself, one's impotence and fatigue after 18 hours on stage ... There is probably no such artist who would not dream of playing this role. And he also talks about what he still thinks about, a decade after the last performance: “ The modern world lives by a strange philosophy: live for yourself. He takes from nature, takes from other people, takes and takes. And a person must also give.

It is no less painful for the director to say goodbye to his successful performance. But leaving, he does not leave forever. Leaving his mark in the soul and thoughts, he gives a new development to the creator, makes him not stand still, but move and move on and not go astray: “It cannot be said that in the time of Hugo it was difficult, but now it is easier, - says Alexei Borodin . – At all times it was difficult to remain an honest free man. Humanity requires great courage. A good person is resistance to circumstances, it is the knowledge that your path is the only one.

“There is good in every person, Fauchelevent, you just need to wake up the good in him, make him listen to his heart!” - these words of Jean Valjean remained in the memory and hearts of many spectators of our theater. It was this ability of the performance - to awaken goodness in a person - that did not let him leave the stage for so long. And this means that thousands of people who once cried in a dark hall about Jean Valjean dying alone will never forget their duty to other people, because their hearts have forever opened to see and hear the troubles and misfortunes around them. And it means that the entire team that created this wonderful performance fulfilled its high spiritual mission to its audience - the mission that our theater once took on, and faithfully continues to fulfill it, realizing that this path is the only one.

Anna Emelyanova
Olga Bigildinskaya

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