Me and Les Miserables
Jan. 18th, 2013 09:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnI still haven't finished part 4. The thing is LONG! But I am getting there! In the meantime, have moooore thoughts than you ever wanted to know about me and the book and the musical.
It was, I think, the summer after my fifth-grade year (possibly sixth-grade) that we went to Korea for a month. My parents didn't raise me bilingual for reasons that I think were good ones even if knowing current research they might have done things differently. My mom, bless her heart, is extremely competent at many things, but teaching? Not one of them, so I didn't have much luck learning Korean when we were there. Also, I was a confirmed bookaholic by then, and I was allowed to bring three books with me in my bag. THREE. I still remember one of them was Carol Nelson Douglas' Exiles of the Rynth (which was competently written for an 80's sword-and-sorcery fantasy, and which I liked very much, although I'm sure it would suffer if I reread it today), and another had Unicorn in the title (and was horrendously bad, to the extent that I don't remember anything else about it). And then I was getting desperate.
My aunt and uncle, whose place we were staying at, happened to own a set of Reader's Digest condensed book classics (in English). I never found out if they had them because they looked nice on the shelf, because one of them actually was reading them (my aunt taught English), or what, but that was the natural next step. I read Pride and Prejudice, which I thought nice enough though somewhat boring (the snark and everything that makes P&P so wonderful flew right past my little ten-year-old head), Benvenuto Cellini's autobiography (which I very much enjoyed, and probably should look up again) -- and --
And there was one book I passed by on first glance, something like "miserables," and who wants to read about miserable people? But as the month wore on, and I got more and more bored, I opened it up.
Being Reader's Digest, of course, it was madly abridged, and it started with Valjean and the Bishop's candlesticks. Weirdly, someone had just brought up that story in church, so I was aware of it even though I didn't realize it came from this book. I was hooked. I read through the whole thing and fell totally and desperately in love, and was annoyed that it was abridged. If I'd had an unabridged copy I would have probably read the whole thing. I loved this book so much I can't even tell you.
We came home to the US. I went to school. In particular, I carpooled with a friend. The friend's mom always had music going in the car when it was her turn to drive, vocal music I didn't pay much attention to except -- except -- the story that was being told reminded me of something. Could it be--? I remember being suspicious for quite a while, but being afraid to say anything lest I come across as really weird, until one day I heard Confrontation and was sure. (Not knowing any French, I didn't know how to pronounce the names, and was unsure until that point that this "Javare" fellow was the same as the "Javert" I'd read about.) BINGO. I stammered out the question to Mrs. G: "Is -- is that music related to Les Miserables?" (You can imagine how I pronounced it, too.)
She answered in the affirmative (and corrected my pronunciation) and MADE ME A COPY OF THE TAPE. It was the Broadway Recording. I was in heaven. I had the whole thing pretty much memorized, well, pretty soon thereafter. (She also gave me the Phantom of the Opera, but I outgrew that. I've never outgrown Les Mis, the book or the musical.)
Around this time, I expect, was when the first unabridged paperback version came out. I was soooooo excited! I somehow got my parents to buy it for me (not sure how, they weren't really into buying books in general). I took that book to college, to grad school, and it's sitting beside me right now. But although I read most of the words in it at least once (though I'm discovering more and more bits I never did read), I never read it straight all the way through. (Until now!)
Then my parents went to NJ to visit my uncle, and my lovely awesome wonderful parents, who have always cared a lot about making sure we kids had expanded cultural horizons, decided I was old enough to go to a Broadway play and that this would be a good educational experience. "Les Miserables," I said immediately. "It's great literature!"
So we went. And my tiny little mind EXPLODED. You have to understand that the only musical productions I had ever seen in my LIFE up to that point were mostly-Rodgers-and-Hammerstein productions put on by the local high school. And Sound of Music and Mary Poppins. And this -- this -- was like nothing I had ever seen, visually and musically and production-wise. And I was at the age where the cheesiness of the music -- and yes, musically it's really nothing to write home about -- didn't bother me. And at the age where I totally and completely bought in to all of the emotional turns it took. And it was such a wonderful adaption, true to the book in spirit as well as in plot while still being (mostly) coherent. (I still feel that way.)
I immediately went back and excitedly told my sister how amazing and wonderful it was and how it was quite possibly the best thing that had ever happened, and, well, you can guess what happened: my sister wanted to go too, and pestered my parents until one of them took her to see it -- and therefore me to see it AGAIN. It was just as completely wonderful the second time around, too.
There was one sad thing -- I found out there were a whole bunch of lyrics that hadn't made their way onto the soundtrack. This made me very sad! Then I found out -- I don't remember how -- that they were putting out a Complete Symphonic Recording, with every single note that was in the musical.
It was $50. That was a fortune. I usually had a hard time getting together enough money to buy a book at one-tenth the price!
I saved up. This is the one thing I remember in my childhood saving up to get. I may have scrimped a little on money for Christmas presents for my family that year :P :) I went shopping -- gosh, I seem to remember it was on a school field trip, we went to go see a play and afterwards they dumped us at the mall for an hour, is that even plausible? it seems wildly implausible -- and bought my mom some jewelry for Christmas And The Complete Symphonic Recording. VICTORY.
...I still have pretty much the entire Complete Symphonic Recording (henceforth CSR) memorized, taking up valuable brain space I could be using for, I don't know, physics or something. I think the CDs are in a box in this house somewhere, and I have mp3s ripped from the CDs on basically every listening device I own. I am pretty sure I know exactly where that old cassette tape is in my parents' house.
Because Terrence Mann was, literally, my introduction to Les Miserables the musical, I basically imprinted on his interpretation of Javert. Javert was my favorite character in the book, and I must have listened to "Stars" and "Javert's Suicide" about fifty million times. As far as I'm concerned, Mann's calmly brusque portrayal of Javert is THE Javert. Philip Quast, on CSR, has always struck me as slightly wavery and emotional (I'm sorry, but I actually start laughing at his "It is either Valjean.... [DRAMATIC PAUSE] or JAVERT!"), too emotional for the Javert of the books, who outwardly acts completely calm until the moment of suicide. Even internally, his internal monologue is waaaaay more calm than, oh, Marius'. I know everyone else in the UNIVERSE prefers Quast, and, well, I think he's a great singer and I love him in (say) the West End Secret Garden, but for Javert, Terrence Mann is IT for me.
I also slightly prefer Colm Wilkinson to Gary Morris, but I very much enjoy them both.
I see that David Bryant played Marius on Broadway; I apparently have absolutely no memory of him at all. Michael Ball will forever and always be Marius to me! Now, I must admit that he has a full rich voice where I want to use the adjective "throbbing" to describe it. It is throbbing with emotion and heartfeltness and FEELS! ...This isn't, honestly, so different from book!Marius, although a little heavy on the throbs and a little light on the awkwardness of book!Marius. But anyway, I imprinted on Michael Ball, too, so! I later listened to the 10th-anniversary recording, though, and that was awkward because of Michael Ball getting too old and stout to play a young student who's not getting enough to eat.
The other singer on the CSR who completely imprinted on me was Anthony Warlow as Enjolras. Now, he is a very distant, heroic Enjolras! I commented tosophia_sol that I think of Warlow's Enjolras as constantly striking nobly heroic poses, ideally where everyone can see him being nobly heroic. But anyway, this made me fall in love with Warlow and Warlow's voice. He's also on my DVD of G&S's Pinafore, which I love.
The others I didn't feel strongly about in either recording. :)
It was, I think, the summer after my fifth-grade year (possibly sixth-grade) that we went to Korea for a month. My parents didn't raise me bilingual for reasons that I think were good ones even if knowing current research they might have done things differently. My mom, bless her heart, is extremely competent at many things, but teaching? Not one of them, so I didn't have much luck learning Korean when we were there. Also, I was a confirmed bookaholic by then, and I was allowed to bring three books with me in my bag. THREE. I still remember one of them was Carol Nelson Douglas' Exiles of the Rynth (which was competently written for an 80's sword-and-sorcery fantasy, and which I liked very much, although I'm sure it would suffer if I reread it today), and another had Unicorn in the title (and was horrendously bad, to the extent that I don't remember anything else about it). And then I was getting desperate.
My aunt and uncle, whose place we were staying at, happened to own a set of Reader's Digest condensed book classics (in English). I never found out if they had them because they looked nice on the shelf, because one of them actually was reading them (my aunt taught English), or what, but that was the natural next step. I read Pride and Prejudice, which I thought nice enough though somewhat boring (the snark and everything that makes P&P so wonderful flew right past my little ten-year-old head), Benvenuto Cellini's autobiography (which I very much enjoyed, and probably should look up again) -- and --
And there was one book I passed by on first glance, something like "miserables," and who wants to read about miserable people? But as the month wore on, and I got more and more bored, I opened it up.
Being Reader's Digest, of course, it was madly abridged, and it started with Valjean and the Bishop's candlesticks. Weirdly, someone had just brought up that story in church, so I was aware of it even though I didn't realize it came from this book. I was hooked. I read through the whole thing and fell totally and desperately in love, and was annoyed that it was abridged. If I'd had an unabridged copy I would have probably read the whole thing. I loved this book so much I can't even tell you.
We came home to the US. I went to school. In particular, I carpooled with a friend. The friend's mom always had music going in the car when it was her turn to drive, vocal music I didn't pay much attention to except -- except -- the story that was being told reminded me of something. Could it be--? I remember being suspicious for quite a while, but being afraid to say anything lest I come across as really weird, until one day I heard Confrontation and was sure. (Not knowing any French, I didn't know how to pronounce the names, and was unsure until that point that this "Javare" fellow was the same as the "Javert" I'd read about.) BINGO. I stammered out the question to Mrs. G: "Is -- is that music related to Les Miserables?" (You can imagine how I pronounced it, too.)
She answered in the affirmative (and corrected my pronunciation) and MADE ME A COPY OF THE TAPE. It was the Broadway Recording. I was in heaven. I had the whole thing pretty much memorized, well, pretty soon thereafter. (She also gave me the Phantom of the Opera, but I outgrew that. I've never outgrown Les Mis, the book or the musical.)
Around this time, I expect, was when the first unabridged paperback version came out. I was soooooo excited! I somehow got my parents to buy it for me (not sure how, they weren't really into buying books in general). I took that book to college, to grad school, and it's sitting beside me right now. But although I read most of the words in it at least once (though I'm discovering more and more bits I never did read), I never read it straight all the way through. (Until now!)
Then my parents went to NJ to visit my uncle, and my lovely awesome wonderful parents, who have always cared a lot about making sure we kids had expanded cultural horizons, decided I was old enough to go to a Broadway play and that this would be a good educational experience. "Les Miserables," I said immediately. "It's great literature!"
So we went. And my tiny little mind EXPLODED. You have to understand that the only musical productions I had ever seen in my LIFE up to that point were mostly-Rodgers-and-Hammerstein productions put on by the local high school. And Sound of Music and Mary Poppins. And this -- this -- was like nothing I had ever seen, visually and musically and production-wise. And I was at the age where the cheesiness of the music -- and yes, musically it's really nothing to write home about -- didn't bother me. And at the age where I totally and completely bought in to all of the emotional turns it took. And it was such a wonderful adaption, true to the book in spirit as well as in plot while still being (mostly) coherent. (I still feel that way.)
I immediately went back and excitedly told my sister how amazing and wonderful it was and how it was quite possibly the best thing that had ever happened, and, well, you can guess what happened: my sister wanted to go too, and pestered my parents until one of them took her to see it -- and therefore me to see it AGAIN. It was just as completely wonderful the second time around, too.
There was one sad thing -- I found out there were a whole bunch of lyrics that hadn't made their way onto the soundtrack. This made me very sad! Then I found out -- I don't remember how -- that they were putting out a Complete Symphonic Recording, with every single note that was in the musical.
It was $50. That was a fortune. I usually had a hard time getting together enough money to buy a book at one-tenth the price!
I saved up. This is the one thing I remember in my childhood saving up to get. I may have scrimped a little on money for Christmas presents for my family that year :P :) I went shopping -- gosh, I seem to remember it was on a school field trip, we went to go see a play and afterwards they dumped us at the mall for an hour, is that even plausible? it seems wildly implausible -- and bought my mom some jewelry for Christmas And The Complete Symphonic Recording. VICTORY.
...I still have pretty much the entire Complete Symphonic Recording (henceforth CSR) memorized, taking up valuable brain space I could be using for, I don't know, physics or something. I think the CDs are in a box in this house somewhere, and I have mp3s ripped from the CDs on basically every listening device I own. I am pretty sure I know exactly where that old cassette tape is in my parents' house.
Because Terrence Mann was, literally, my introduction to Les Miserables the musical, I basically imprinted on his interpretation of Javert. Javert was my favorite character in the book, and I must have listened to "Stars" and "Javert's Suicide" about fifty million times. As far as I'm concerned, Mann's calmly brusque portrayal of Javert is THE Javert. Philip Quast, on CSR, has always struck me as slightly wavery and emotional (I'm sorry, but I actually start laughing at his "It is either Valjean.... [DRAMATIC PAUSE] or JAVERT!"), too emotional for the Javert of the books, who outwardly acts completely calm until the moment of suicide. Even internally, his internal monologue is waaaaay more calm than, oh, Marius'. I know everyone else in the UNIVERSE prefers Quast, and, well, I think he's a great singer and I love him in (say) the West End Secret Garden, but for Javert, Terrence Mann is IT for me.
I also slightly prefer Colm Wilkinson to Gary Morris, but I very much enjoy them both.
I see that David Bryant played Marius on Broadway; I apparently have absolutely no memory of him at all. Michael Ball will forever and always be Marius to me! Now, I must admit that he has a full rich voice where I want to use the adjective "throbbing" to describe it. It is throbbing with emotion and heartfeltness and FEELS! ...This isn't, honestly, so different from book!Marius, although a little heavy on the throbs and a little light on the awkwardness of book!Marius. But anyway, I imprinted on Michael Ball, too, so! I later listened to the 10th-anniversary recording, though, and that was awkward because of Michael Ball getting too old and stout to play a young student who's not getting enough to eat.
The other singer on the CSR who completely imprinted on me was Anthony Warlow as Enjolras. Now, he is a very distant, heroic Enjolras! I commented to
sophia_sol that I think of Warlow's Enjolras as constantly striking nobly heroic poses, ideally where everyone can see him being nobly heroic. But anyway, this made me fall in love with Warlow and Warlow's voice. He's also on my DVD of G&S's Pinafore, which I love.The others I didn't feel strongly about in either recording. :)
no subject
Date: 2013-01-19 05:46 am (UTC)Noooo! Terrence Mann 4EVAH!
no subject
Date: 2013-01-19 06:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-19 06:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-19 06:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-19 05:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-20 05:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-20 12:51 am (UTC)I remember saving up for the international recording ( = complete symphonic, yes?), though I waited to buy it till I had an income, in 1995. By 1989 the dub-tape lender had stopped talking to me, unrelatedly :) but I did end up borrowing the French concept album from a bilingual Canadian friend during high school, one who abhorred dubs, so to respect her wishes I didn't make a copy....
These exertions to learn and acquire and mind-expand leave marks on memory in ways that searching for audio tracks online kind of don't, I think. I wonder what'll be meaningful about media-hunting for our kids.
no subject
Date: 2013-01-20 06:10 am (UTC)I've never listened to the French concept album, although I looked for it for quite a while back then -- of course, those were the days before Amazon, and now that I'm thinking about it, I see that it's easily available from there. *puts on shopping list* ...Thus proving your point, I guess! On one hand, it's amazing to me that our kids are going to have access to all this stuff at their fingertips, I think that's wonderful -- and on the other hand, as you point out, they may not have the kinds of stories we do... Maybe other things will give them their stories?
no subject
Date: 2013-01-21 05:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-07 05:21 pm (UTC)And Jacques Mercier, who I think is the most like book!Javert. (I am super looking forward to your opinions on the French Concept! It is a very polarizing album. I love it a lot, though, and I'm glad that pieces of it found their way into the Paris Revival.)
(I do like Quast, but I like Terrence Mann, too. Really, I like most Javerts I've heard, except Drew Sarich and the guy on the original Madrid recording, and I think Norm Lewis was too cuddly.)