![]() Song after song is taken at a slow pace, with brief melodic motifs repeated over and over. On a single disc, with a running time of just over an hour (as opposed to the two-disc original cast version), this recording of Notre-Dame de Paris makes it sound like a ballad-heavy show. But Cocciante and Plamondon restore the complicated romantic quartet, which means that many of the songs find these characters agonizing over their thwarted love. This allows for cutting and simplification, but also tends to give the story more of a gothic-horror element than the author originally intended. There is a temptation when adapting it to emphasize its "beauty and the beast" aspect by focusing on Esmeralda and Quasimodo. Set in the 15th century, it tells the tragic tale of the love several men feel for a gypsy (Esmeralda), a captain (Phoebus), the hunchbacked bell ringer of the Notre-Dame Cathedral (Quasimodo), and the cathedral's priest (Frollo). And Notre-Dame de Paris, though an early work (he published it before he was 30), has had a long life, having been adapted into several films, including a Disney-produced animated musical version in 1996. ![]() ![]() Hugo is a popular author for French musical theater writers, also having written Les Misérables, which was successfully adapted into a musical by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg. The album begins with a pop recording of Esmeralda's final ballad, "Live for the One I Love," rendered by "guest star" Celine Dion. The original backing tracks have been retained, as has much of the French cast - Garou as Quasimodo, Daniel Lavoie as Frollo, Luck Mervil as Clopin, and Bruno Pelletier as Gringoire - though Australian pop star Tina Arena has been brought in as Esmeralda, Steve Balsamo sings the role of Phoebus, and Natasha St-Pierre is Fleur-de-Lys. American lyricist Will Jennings was brought in to create an English-language version, and this is the result. ![]() Composer Richard Cocciante and lyricist Luc Plamondon's musical Notre-Dame de Paris, based on the 1831 Victor Hugo novel (usually translated into English as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame), was an enormous French hit, both onstage in Paris and in record stores, where the cast album topped the charts. ![]()
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