Miserable Ones - Part 2: Hugo set to Music

          The musical adaptation of Victor Hugo's novel opened in its English version in London in 1985, and is the second-longest running musical ever (only exceeded by the New York run of the Fantasticks, which lasted 42 years).  It will go on hiatus during the fall of 2019 while its theater is renovated, but will start right up again in December.  The original French version extends the record back to 1980.

            Les Misérables is not the first work by Hugo to be translated to the musical stage. Hugo himself adapted The Hunchback of Notre Dame into an opera version in 1836, with music by Louise Bertin.  He changed the title to La Esmeralda, focused more on the gypsy dancer than the hunchback, and gave it a happy ending.  The opera was a monumental flop and soon forgotten.  Hugo also wrote plays, and several were adapted into splendid and successful operas, the two best-known with music by Verdi: Hernani(which became Ernani)and the ever-popularRigoletto, taken from Le Roi se Amuse, with the location and philandering nobleman changed from France to Italy to avoid censorship. 

            "Les Miz," with its enduring Cosette logo, taken from the illustration in Hugo's 1862 publication, is known all over the world.  It was originally conceived by Alain Boubil (book) and Claude-Michel Schönberg (music) as a French "concept-musical" in 1980, and successfully staged in Paris the same year, though for a limited run.  The English-language version was produced by Cameron Macintosh, with its libretto written by Herbert Kretzmer, and subsequently expanded further, keeping about a third of the French book in translation, while most of the musical numbers were retained, though modified. Additional scenes, songs and a prologue were added. There have also been cuts over the years, and restorations too, but the basic structure of the show is retained.  

            Numerous websites give particulars about both the French and English versions, and both are available in full on you-tube.  I recommend the complete symphonic recording for the English score, though it has to be streamed in segments.  The Mackintosh production has been translated and produced in many languages--full performances in Spanish and German can also be found on You Tube.

            The internet contains a veritable avalanche of blogs and other websites on all aspects of Hugo's novel, the musical, and films. After so much hype and reviews, reactions and commentaries, what more is to be said?  Here is some of this writer's own very personal reflections on how well the show conveys the plot and sometimes the essence of the novel.

            The musical Les Miserables takes the major incidents of Hugo's sprawling book, dispenses with the digressions, and of necessity with the change in art form, tells the its story through successive episodes, beginning with Valjean's release from his 19-year prison sentence, following many, but not all, of the fits and starts of his journey, and ends with his death in spiritual peace.  The entire score is sung, opera-style, complete with recitatives à la Mozart or Rossini, to give many details to advance the plot.  Many of its tunes are repeated in the way of Wagnerian leitmotifs, by different characters with different lyrics.  The result is a coherent and dramatic whole manages to convey the spirit of Hugo's novel. That said, it's not a classic opera. Many of its songs are not arias but French Euro-pop melodies characteristic of the 1980's; some of its numbers evoke earlier prototypes: "Do You Hear The People Sing" is a modern Marseillaise, here used with some irony, since the uprising of 1832 was in reality pretty small. On the other hand, it still resonates: I heard it this morning on the radio in connection with an ongoing Filipino election campaign.  "Master of the House" evokes The Threepenny Opera(particularly, not surprisingly, in the German production).

            It's a theatrical necessity that the antithetical characters of Valjean and Javert be established at the beginning, at the time of Valjean's release from his sentence even though, in the novel, Javert doesn't recognize Valjean-the-criminal until he frees Fauchelevant from the overturned cart in M-sur-M.  On the other hand, in no musical version is Gavroche identified as a member of the Thernadier family.  As a matter of fact, Alain Boubil was inspired to conceive Les Misérables as a musical after he had seen a London production of Oliver, and was inspired by the character of the Artful Dodger as an inspiration for Hugo's urchin.  In the musical, Gavroche is a sort of stand-alone symbol of all of the street-orphans of 19th-century Paris.

            In the musical, it's the women become the most misérable. Éponine, who had been such a pampered child, becomes a street-waif as her family fails and moves to Paris.  The musical omits her sister Azelma altogether. Éponine suffers from unrequited love of Marius, which allows the writer and composers to cast her as the tragic girl, and this sets her up for some terrific belted-out torch-songs (her part in "In My Life" and her solos "On My Own" and "A Little Drop of Rain.")

            Fantine is the other victim, aware of what she's lost in "I Dreamed a Dream," and the tour-de-force narration in a single song of the chronicle of her fall ("Lovely Lady,") and her dying lament (which shares a melody with Éponine's "On My Own."

            Each of the major characters gets at least one solo-soliloquy that really defines them.  Valjean has the most, as appropriate for the principal hero.  Most serve not only to define his personality but alto further the story ("What Have I Done,?," "Who Am I?," while "Bring Him Home" is an emotional ballad showing his humanity. Javert declares his personal morality in "Stars," and the final negation of it in the song before his suicide, which invokes portions of "Stars," but more importantly also the melody from Valjean's "What Have I done," effectively contrasting the start of one journey and the end of another.

            All the digressive essays and so many of the novel's incidents are cut, both because of theatrical expediency, such as the incident where the fleeing Valjean and Cosette escape vertically from a blind alley, or for the sake of time (Valjean's second imprisonment). There are other scenes which encapsulate a lot of action into small timeframes that really work: for me this includes "Lovely Ladies," mentioned above, "Master of the House," particularly when the long introduction is retained, as it manages to compress the Battle of Waterloo into one line; and "One Day More," in which so many of the story lines, melodies and characters converge, to set up the rest of the plotline.

            The epic scene at the barricades provides spectators with the big pile of street and domestic objects that make up the street blockage.  The audience shares the space of the insurrectionists.  The militia enemy is never seen, but the ominous fanfare that precedes

A real barricade in Paris: a daguerrotype from 1848

each attack makes their menacing presence felt.  So much of the story takes place in this space: the deaths of both Éponine and Gavroche, Javert's capture by the rebels and his release by Valjean and the battle itself ending with a tableau of the slaughtered insurrectionists, as well as Valjean entering the sewers with the wounded Marius.  Even the song during a lull in the action, "Drink With Me," a personal favorite, combines black humor, bravado, and regrets, defining the personalities of diverse student participants. The futility of the uprising is first reflected in ambitious productions by having the barricade set revolve to its front side, to reveal the tableau of defeat and death, or in more modest ones simply presenting it by the way the actors fall on the fixed barricade set. then reflected by women collecting the participant's bodies ("Turning") and Marius's lament of survivor's guilt ("Empty Chairs with Empty Tables").

            And then, there's the sewer scene with its eerie music that adds to its spooky, dark, sinister atmosphere.

            I don't want to go on listing all the songs and how they function; others have done that.  I just think that in the end, the musical play works very well in capturing the spirit of Hugo's novel, and I'm intrigued at how many theatrical conventions are used throughout the show. These include recitative, tableaux, traditional solos, and even an apotheosis, when all of the dead protagonists join Fantine as Valjean's moral muse, to see the redeemed old hero out.

            A quick word on the 2012 film of the musical: it is good, perhaps better than most movie adaptations of Broadway/London theatrical productions.  Some of the cuts from later productions of the stage show (including the explanatory prologue to "Master of the House") happen here too.  On the other hand, the flexibility of filmed episodeso allow for a staging of the blind alley scene, though it's not particularly dramatic.  A better addition is the actual building of the barricade, with people throwing furniture out of windows, and the staging of both sides of the street battle.

            Casting in the film, though be better: Much as I like them both as actors, Russel Crowe is an opaque, thuggish Javert, while for me, Hugh Jackman is a far too youthful and attractive choice for Jean Valjean.  Colm Wilkinson, whom I saw in the New York production, really incarnated Valjean for me--and though he played the Bishop in the movie, Jean Valjean he will always remain.  The Thernadiers of Helena Bonham-Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen were very funny, but in their burlesquing never showed the darker side of the couple.  That may be partially in the nature of the musical comedy tradition, but the late Leo Burmeister managed to juggle both in the Broadway production.

            The musical version of Les Misérableshad been the vehicle keeping Hugo's epic tale alive during the last decades of the 20th century and the first of the 21th.  And it's still going: If anybody in San Antonio reads this, yet another traveling production will be here Sept 17-22, 2019 and you can get another dose.  That is, if you haven't deserted it for Hamilton.

My Very Own Sweatshirt, bought in New York in 1987

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Wikipedia has a good article on the Musicals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Misérables_(musical)

The complete English symphonic production, with no cuts is available at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00P5Zc6lRlU&list=PL8f_ACV3dM08n8OUsPLwpDJQ94Gd77DTf

(note that this is a link to the first segment.  You then have to play each successive one)

The original French Concept (with stills from the show) version is at: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFnXaGzFrwY

A list of songs and their correspondences in the French and English versions, though incomplete and in need of checking and revision: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songs_from_Les_Misérables

Erin Kahn's thoughtful analysis of the differences between some texts in the French and English versions:http://woodbtwntheworlds.blogspot.com/2014/08/les-miserables-original-french-concept.html

The whole German Version, performed in Duisberg, in 1999, though somewhat blurry:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pisu16FmCxY (German-Duisberg 1999)

The Whole Spanish Version, Performed in 2011 in Madrid streams at:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBf0pGatTvw

Miserables: Good Bad and Ugly, Part 1

 

"Fantine," by Margaret Bernardine Hall (1886)

           

            In 1986, some friends who had been spending time in England raved about a new musical based on Victor Hugo's Les Misérables.  When an American production was announced the following year, I asked my father if he could get us tickets for the next time we visited him and my mom in New York. The tickets were ridiculously expensive and almost impossible, but my Dad promised that if I read the Victor Hugo novel--complete and unabridged--he would get some.  Well, I did and he did.

            It was a good thing that our visit was months off, because Hugo's epic, over 1500 pages in the 1887 Hapgood English translation, took a long time to read.  In the manner of some 19th-century novels (think War and Peace, for example), spanning a number of years, it has a large cast of characters, and spends a lot of time ruminating about them and their thoughts and habits.  When you're done, you really know these fictional people in depth.  The author divides his epic into 5 volumes, each subdivided into books, and these in turn into chapters. Each has its own title. Embedded in the novel are tangential essays on topics such as the Battle of Waterloo (more than 60 pages long), a meditation on convents (50 pages +), street urchins, Parisian street slang, barricades and how to build them, and a tour and history of Paris's sewers. 

            For the modern reader, it's a slog.  Imagine, in the middle of a contemporary epic thriller, time out for a 50-page discussion of the D-Day invasion, merely because one of the character's uncles participated in it and a result had PTSD, which subsequently made it hard on his family, but only tangentially on the character herself?

"The Escalade"

            When the action moves along, the narration is riveting, for example when Valjean and Cosette, pursued by Javert and trapped in a blind alley, manage to escape in the dark by scaling a very tall wall, this being accomplished by skills that Valjean learned as a criminal, and helped in no small way by his phenomenal stamina and strength.  It was tense drama when I first read it, and remains so now on a second reading, even when I know how it turns out. 

            What most impresses me is that the principal characters in Hugo's novel, though very much embedded in their 19th-century world, are timeless, and they resonate in us to this day. Human nature, both positive and negative, transcends time.  This is hard-wiring.

            The two main antagonists, Jean Valjean and Javert are the most complex, and Hugo, by exploring their backstories, helps define this complexity.  Some critics have suggested that in some ways these two men are very similar, but it seems to this reader that they are polar opposites in the way they cope with the traumas and events in their lives.

            Valjean comes from a modest rural family.  When he commits what would now be considered a misdemeanor, he is sentenced to the galleys for a five-year prison term--not uncommon back then.  By the early 19th-century, criminals serving in galleys were no longer slave rowers. Many of them were physically housed on prison hulks by the city of Toulon, Tikkun Olam, "The Repair of the World."  The process is slow, and at first he robs a boy of some money almost as a knee-jerk throwback to his prison life, but the rest of this massive novel chronicles his journey.

Jean Valjean as Mayor Madeleine

and brought onshore to do chain-gang labor.  Because of several escape attempts, Valjean's prison term stretched out to nineteen years. Hugo endows Jean Valjean with prodigious strength, but he is at first an anti-hero, and even later, never a superhero, but a conflicted and human one.  On his release after 19 years, he must have been suffering from PTSD, not a condition known about back then, and at that moment anger at the society and system that incarcerated him.  It takes the saintliness of Bishop Myriel, who not only gifts him materially, but who instills in him an isotope of trust and faith, to begin his metamorphosis into humanity and a desire to practice what Jewish belief calls

            Hugo makes it clear that Valjean's own consciousness in his quest for self-redemption that when he surfaces in the town of "M sur M" and heroically rescues children from a fire, he  assumes the name "Father Madeleine," certainly an identification with that premier Christian example of redemption, Mary Magdalen. He thrives there (including using his great strength to rescue a man from under a collapsed cart), and uses his wealth derived from the Bishop's silver to help the town become prosperous, eventually having his own jet bead factory and being elected Mayor. But he is still learning the ropes, defining morality too narrowly, and dismissing Fantine from his factory because she has lied about her illegitimate child. Later, when he tries to help her--too late--he begins to understand that human nature is seldom black and white, nor are the vagaries of living.  It is then when his confrontation with his nemesis, the police inspector of his town, truly sets him on his own redemptive path, which will grow in him even through another, briefer prison term, from which he escapes, leaving him technically once again a fugitive.

Javert

            I wonder if it is the fact that Valjean had a normal life and familial connections for 27 years before he stole that bread helped in the recuperation of his humanity.  Is it this lack of a normal childhood that will determine the path of Inspector Javert?  According to Hugo's description of him, Javert's features somewhat resemble a gorilla, and we never learn his first name.  Hugo gives him a grim past: he is born within prison walls, his mother a fortune teller, his father a criminal.  He is like Valjean in a fierce desire to better himself, but with no real childhood or family life, there's no underlying foundation of humanity.  He will always see things strictly by his definition of lawful morality in black and white.  Upholding the law is his one and only anchor to direct him out of the prison ambiance, which makes him a rigid

fundamentalist. He sees right and wrong as exclusive opposites.  If you are in the wrong you can never be trusted because you can never rise above evil. It reminds me of some politicians now who cross off the eligibility of a candidate because he smoked a joint when he was 16.

            When Javert formally meets Valjean as Mayor Madeleine when he becomes police chief in M sur M, he instinctively recognizes him as a formal criminal, though it takes him time to narrow his former identity down to Jean Valgean who he observed as a on the chain gang 16 years previously. When in the end Valjean spares his life at the barricades, this glimpse of the possibility of change rips away his absolute, rule-bound anchor, and his life becomes meaningless; suicide is the only solution.

Mr. & Mrs. Thernadier

            Other principal characters in the novel also still resonate, though they are less nuanced.  Fantine, too innocent at first and too trusting of her lover (whom we could equate to a fraternity-boy stereotype), is an example of a good person making bad judgements.  She becomes a victim of the sex trade after leaving her daughter with strangers.  The Thernadier parents are scoundrels, rapacious and amoral.  They keep turning up like bad pennies, leaving train wrecks behind them.   Cosette also begins as a victim; I am surprised that her experience as Cinderella among the Thernadiers leaves her relatively unscathed--is Valjean's rescue and unconditional love timely enough to restore her innocence? And Marius, that privileged boy who manages to escape his monarchist, ultra-conservative grandfather's thumb, goes to the barricades not for any political ideal, but because he thinks he can't have the girl he loves?

            Those of us old enough to have lived through the student unrest of the late 1960's can certainly identify with the ill-fated students from the ABC tavern and their abortive revolution.  Enjolras is one of those pure political idealists who lives and dies for his ideology--but, like Javert, is completely lacking in compassion for the working poor he thinks he represents.  These are the same upper middle-class young men as the fraternity boys who play around with Fantine and her friends, though youthful idealism sets them apart. 

            The street people we meet, especially two of the five Thenardier offspring, can find their echo in poor kids of any working people's neighborhood, though contemporary American society is more marginally fluid than that of France of the 1830's. Éponine and Gavroche have no way out, once they are dragged from lower middle-class marginal

Marius Conforting the Dying Éponine

respectability to the urban streets, and their parents join the underworld of Paris.  These are intelligent children with initiative, and Éponine is the only female protagonist in the novel with who is independent-minded and mistress of her own fate, but at that time, there was really nowhere for her to go, and her attachment for the refined Marius is doomed from the start.  Maybe if she lived in the United States in Hugo's time she might have grown up to be a tough pioneer, or if she had lived a little later, Calamity Jane.

            I'm afraid this is a very superficial look at a very dense and complex novel.  I am no literary critic.  I have written these thoughts only to provide a basis for my next entry, which will deal with thoughts on Les Misérablesas it has resonated in some its retelling in various media in the 19th and 20th centuries.

            The best thing is to read the whole epic for yourselves. It is available uncut in the Hapgood translation online, and you can download the whole thing. It also includes the Gustave Brion illustrations for the original French publication of the novel in 1862. I will forgive you if you speed-read through or skip the Battle of Waterloo.

__________________________________________________________________________The project Gutenberg address for the Hapgood translation of Hugo's Les Miserables is at:http://www.gutenberg.org/files/135/135-h/135-h.htm

For an excellent synopsis and a lot of incidental information, see the Wikipedia entry:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Misérables

(an even more detailed synopsis can be found at the French Wikipedia site)

A plethora of 19th-century illustrations for the novel by various illustrators (and the source for the ones I use here) can be seen at:https://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hist255s13/images/illustrations/page/image1.html