![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ah, nostalgia
Apr. 11th, 2005 01:34 amI haven't listened to Les Misérables all the way through in years, although I used to know it word for word. (No kidding. In high school I could start from any point and sing through to the end of the show, and in big overlapping numbers I could do it for any character.) This is the original London cast I'm listening to now; loyalty prompts me to say The Original And Best, but i'm not positive about that. I also have the Complete Symphonic Recording (which is how I know the whole damn show from start to finish) and the original Paris cast -- I've heard the original Broadway version, but never bought it.
When I was a kid I remember my dad wanted to sort of graft the London album and the CSR together, into one recording that had the London cast where there was a recording of that cast (which my parents saw live in 1986, damn them, damn, damn, damn -- live at the Barbican, even) and the CSR for the stuff in between. In 1988, that would have involved hooking two CD players up to a single cassette recorder, or alternatively making liberal use of the pause button. Now, of course, I could arrange the tracks in order and burn a CD in about ten minutes.
I've actually never cared much for Cosette at all, really. I suppose she's very pretty, and that's what Marius sees in her, which is sad for Eponine -- but I've never properly understood what Eponine saw in Marius, to be perfectly honest, when there was Enjolras right there being about nine times more dashing (and sung by Anthony Warlow into the bargain). [shrug] I wonder if there will ever come a day when a singer can use "On My Own" as an audition piece again. Without the auditors rolling their eyes and groaning Oh god, not ANOTHER ONE, I mean.
Hey, here's the finale -- and with the equalizer set this way, not only can you hear Wilkinson distinctly over the chorus (which is appropriate), but you can also hear Patti LuPone quite clearly. I've never heard that before. [pats speakers]
On the Paris recording, entirely properly, Valjean calls Javert vous, and Javert calls Valjean tu (when they are prisoner and warden; later, when Valjean is mayor and Javert is obsessed-police-inspector, they tutoie each other). The same is true of Fantine and Valjean -- and of Eponine and Marius, which I find lovely and sad. The French cast is solid -- their Cosette is a little thin-sounding, and their Marius is incredibly nasal, but they're note-perfect -- just the styles don't agree with me. Also, the French lyrics have different rhyme patterns in a lot of places than the English ones, which always throws me a bit. Sometimes the French words are a lot better, though, which you can't always expect from stuff in translation; the line in "On My Own" which in English is "the world is full of happiness that I have never known" is, in French, un rêve plein de douceur dont je n'ai jamais eu ma part -- "a dream full of sweetness of which i have never had my share". That whole number is better in French, actually.
1 (incidentally, we saw a guy as cmdr. khashoggi in we will rock you whose bio seems to claim that he played javert in the original production and sang the part on the recording -- in fact, he was the original grantaire, a far less significant part, and sang that part on the recording; he must have been promoted to javert at some later date. he was still, i'm guessing, old enough to be the father of most of the rest of the WWRY cast, however.)
When I was a kid I remember my dad wanted to sort of graft the London album and the CSR together, into one recording that had the London cast where there was a recording of that cast (which my parents saw live in 1986, damn them, damn, damn, damn -- live at the Barbican, even) and the CSR for the stuff in between. In 1988, that would have involved hooking two CD players up to a single cassette recorder, or alternatively making liberal use of the pause button. Now, of course, I could arrange the tracks in order and burn a CD in about ten minutes.
- Valjean -- there is no better Valjean than Colm Wilkinson, and there is no better recording of his Valjean than this one. I've heard people say they liked him better on the new york album, and they're just mistaken. We will not consider Gary Morris.
- Javert1 -- this is Roger Allam, and he's very good, and I like his duets with Wilkinson; but nobody, nobody is like Phillip Quast on the CSR (though he does get a little Dramatic at times -- and when someone's too Dramatic for this material, you know he's gone a little too far).
- Fantine -- see, I was raised on Patti LuPone as Fantine, and I knew her in this part before I ever knew her as Evita, even, or as anything else or anything mock-worthy. Now that I'm older and wiser (and know the pitch-perfect imitation of La LuPone on Forbidden Broadway Strikes Back, by the way), I can see where the Randi Graff performance on the Broadway album has a good deal to recommend it. I don't care for Debbie Byrne on the CSR; never have.
- Marius -- Marius! Michael Ball! It's a shame what happened to Michael Ball, isn't it? He got successful and smug and jowly, in that order, and he's not fun to listen to anymore. I don't even like him on the CSR -- it sounds like he's holding back. On the London recording, you can hear him open his mouth and sing, and it's lovely.
- Cosette -- Rebecca Caine: yes. Judy Kuhn: lovely voice, but wrong for the part. Tracey Shane: no, no, no. In fact as a teenager I blamed her for the disappointment that was Michael Ball's performance on the CSR; that's how wrong she is.
- Eponine -- Frances Ruffelle. London recording. Next question. No, seriously, there should be a picture of this girl in the dictionary under "created the role" and another one under "retired the role". Her voice is quite nasal and pop-y, but she's so good she convinces you that's what the role calls for. There will be no Lea Salonga; there will be no Debbie freakin Gibson; Kaho Shimada, the Japanese singer on the CSR, is very good, but she spoke no English and you can often tell, plus see above wrt over-dramatizing this material.
- Enjolras -- aha. See, I like this guy on the London recording, but the real winner as Enjolras is the golden-voiced Anthony Warlow on the CSR. [pauses for a moment to think about that voice][sighs happily]
I've actually never cared much for Cosette at all, really. I suppose she's very pretty, and that's what Marius sees in her, which is sad for Eponine -- but I've never properly understood what Eponine saw in Marius, to be perfectly honest, when there was Enjolras right there being about nine times more dashing (and sung by Anthony Warlow into the bargain). [shrug] I wonder if there will ever come a day when a singer can use "On My Own" as an audition piece again. Without the auditors rolling their eyes and groaning Oh god, not ANOTHER ONE, I mean.
Hey, here's the finale -- and with the equalizer set this way, not only can you hear Wilkinson distinctly over the chorus (which is appropriate), but you can also hear Patti LuPone quite clearly. I've never heard that before. [pats speakers]
On the Paris recording, entirely properly, Valjean calls Javert vous, and Javert calls Valjean tu (when they are prisoner and warden; later, when Valjean is mayor and Javert is obsessed-police-inspector, they tutoie each other). The same is true of Fantine and Valjean -- and of Eponine and Marius, which I find lovely and sad. The French cast is solid -- their Cosette is a little thin-sounding, and their Marius is incredibly nasal, but they're note-perfect -- just the styles don't agree with me. Also, the French lyrics have different rhyme patterns in a lot of places than the English ones, which always throws me a bit. Sometimes the French words are a lot better, though, which you can't always expect from stuff in translation; the line in "On My Own" which in English is "the world is full of happiness that I have never known" is, in French, un rêve plein de douceur dont je n'ai jamais eu ma part -- "a dream full of sweetness of which i have never had my share". That whole number is better in French, actually.
1 (incidentally, we saw a guy as cmdr. khashoggi in we will rock you whose bio seems to claim that he played javert in the original production and sang the part on the recording -- in fact, he was the original grantaire, a far less significant part, and sang that part on the recording; he must have been promoted to javert at some later date. he was still, i'm guessing, old enough to be the father of most of the rest of the WWRY cast, however.)
