The Megamusical

4 “To Love Another Person Is to See the Face of God”: Les Misérables

175 4“To Love Another Person Is to See the Face of God” Les Misérables Once in every five years or so, given average theatergoing luck, a musical soars out, providing a feast for the eyes as well as the ears, and this show is one such: a great blazing pageant of life and death at the barricade of political and social revolution in Victor Hugo’s nineteenth-century France. Sheridan Morley, Spread a Little Happiness: The First Hundred Years of the British Musical Les Misérables was one of the first megamusicals created by a team that did not include Andrew Lloyd Webber. In fact, Les Mis,1 as it came to be known, would go on to become not only the most successful megamusical of the decade, but the most successful musical of all time. Although the team behind Les Mis included Cameron Mackintosh, it is nevertheless remarkable that a relatively unknown composer and lyricist, aspiring to Lloyd Webber’s model of the megamusical , surpassed him in international success with this “great blazing pageant of life and death.” Les Mis sprang from a virtually musical-free zone. The lyricist and composer were distant from the Broadway scene of the 1980s, and from British and American musical theater in general. In France, the home-grown musical had never really taken root; no French creators had mounted a successful Broadway-style musical either within France or as an exported show. Musicals simply did not register on the French cultural radar, although American and British musicals did occasionally visit. Like the proto-megamusical, Jesus Christ Superstar, Les Mis was the brain- 176 “TO LOVE ANOTHER PERSON IS TO SEE THE FACE OF GOD” child of its lyricist and bookwriter, in this case Alain Boublil. A fan of American musicals, Boublil had seen West Side Story in Paris in 1959 and had thought theater music might be in his future. In a life decision similar to Tim Rice’s, Boublil studied more practical fields (business and banking) but began writing lyrics on the side. He got a job at a radio station and soon became a record producer. Boublil would alter his career path when he saw the original Broadway production of Jesus Christ Superstar in New York. That night, the megamusical gained an important adherent: The Lloyd Webber-Rice musical represented an art form Boublil had instinctively been drawn to, without ever believing it could be realised in a world increasingly dominated by pop and disco music: an all-sung musical with an historical theme, mixing the tradition of Italian opera with contemporary musical and literary styles. After the performance, he walked the Manhattan streets in a daze, unable to sleep. As Boublil recalls, he felt an overwhelming compulsion to keep walking until he’d thought of a suitable theme for a rock opera that might compare in scope and emotional intensity with the subject matter of Jesus Christ Superstar. Inspiration came at dawn: why not deal with the single most important event in French history—the French Revolution?2 The result was La Revolution Française, the first megamusical by Boublil and composer Claude-Michel Schönberg. They had met years earlier through Boublil’s wife when Schönberg was also working as a record producer; subsequently Boublil started a publishing company and wrote songs.3 Schönberg, like Lloyd Webber, had been something of a prodigy and studied music throughout his childhood. He composed works by age six and had extensive knowledge of the classical and operatic repertoire, but he did not focus on a career as a composer for a number of years.4 It was Boublil, inspired by Superstar, who took his idea to Schönberg and another composer, Raymond Jeannot, and also a co-writer, JeanMax Rivière. They followed the megamusical model closely, creating a sungthrough score dealing with, as one might imagine, an epic plot strong on drama and emotion. In another Superstar move, they released an album before the show opened, and it was a hit. The show ran for a successful season in 1973 at the Palais des Sports, which by Broadway standards was not nearly long enough to count La Revolution Française as a megamusical hit, but for France it was quite respectable. Schönberg himself made an entertaining Louis XVI. Encouraged by this first attempt and clearly thinking in the megamusical vein now, Boublil had another revelation while seeing a revival of Oliver!, which happened to be produced...