I escaped the heat on Friday by going to see Les Mis\u00e9rables in a nice, air-conditioned cinema.\u00a0 I had a lot of misgivings about this film, it must be said.\u00a0 Firstly, as a singer in training myself, I have Opinions about how things should be sung.\u00a0 But more importantly, I absolutely loved the musical when I saw it as a teenager.\u00a0 I learned all the songs, bought the sheet music and learned all the accompaniments, read several English translations of the text (learning, in passing, what a difference a translator can make), then saw the musical in France and bought that recording and learned all the songs in French, too.\u00a0 I even tried to read the novel in French, but got stuck a couple of hundred pages in, when Hugo goes off on a digression about Napoleon.\u00a0 This had been hard enough to get through in English.\u00a0 In French, it was a bit too much.<\/p>\n
So the film had a lot to live up to, musically speaking, and while it was far better than I had feared, it didn’t quite get there for me.\u00a0 On the other hand, the acting, staging, and general quality of the film really were excellent enough that I could forgive the occasional vocal weakness and the deep strangeness of finding the chorus voices more appealing than those of the leads.\u00a0 It made me cry in all the right places, and only made me wince a handful of times (and let’s face it, one of the reasons I don’t go to films very much is because most of them manage to fill me with ire one way or another, and it is antisocial to express this in a cinema).\u00a0 Overall, I’m glad I saw it.\u00a0 But it has left me with a deep craving for the French recording, which I now have only on an obsolete cassette tape.<\/p>\n
Not much of the version I saw in Paris back in 1991 seems to have made it onto YouTube, but some of it has.\u00a0 And it still makes me cry.<\/p>\n
[youtube http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Up80PWRx9zc&version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0]<\/p>\n
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This is the final, encore version of ‘A La Volont\u00e9 du Peuple’ (At the will of the people \/ Do You Hear the People Sing), and it’s the one that always makes me cry at all the wasted lives.\u00a0 I love it.\u00a0 Like all the songs in the French version, the words are subtly different to those that get sung in English.\u00a0 I think they are better.<\/p>\n
| \u00c0 la volont\u00e9 du peuple dont on n’\u00e9touffe jamais la voix \nEt dont le chant rena\u00eet toujours et dont le chant rena\u00eet d\u00e9j\u00e0 \nNous voulons que la lumi\u00e8re d\u00e9chire le masque de la nuit \nPour illuminer notre terre et changer la vieIl viendra le jour glorieux o\u00f9 dans sa marche vers l’id\u00e9al \nL’homme ira vers le progr\u00e8s du mal au bien du faux au vrai \nUn r\u00eave peut mourir mais on n’enterre jamais l’avenirJoignez-vous \u00e0 la croisade de ceux qui croient au genre humain \nPour une seule barricade qui tombe cent autres se l\u00e8veront demain \n\u00c0 la volont\u00e9 du peuple un tambour chante dans le lointain \nIl vient annoncer le grand jour et c’est pour demain<\/p>\n C’est pour demain!<\/td>\n | At the will of the people, whose voice will never be stifled \nAnd whose song is always reborn, and whose song is being reborn already \nWe want the light to tear away the mask of night \nTo illuminate our world, and change our life. \nThe glorious day will come when, in his march towards perfection \nMan will go from evil to progress, and from falsehood to truth \nA dream can die, but one can never bury the future.Join the crusade of those who believe in the human race \nFor each barricade that falls, a hundred others will rise tomorrow \nAt the will of the people a drum sings in the distance \nIt comes to announce the great day, and that is tomorrow!It is tomorrow!<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n How good is that?<\/p>\n Now, of course, I just want to link to every single song I can find from the French version of Les Mis, but I’m actually going to exercise some restraint here, and just give you Eponine’s song, because this (and Javert’s song, which I cannot find online) was my favourite when I was a teenager, and I think it still holds up.\u00a0 Though I should also note that I think some of the best singing in the entire film was Samantha Barks’ rendition of this song<\/a>.<\/p>\n [youtube http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=RAaM0xupW_U&version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0]<\/p>\n
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