Musicals

Last weekend, I had the wonderful opportunity to see a professional performance of the musical Les Miserables.  Boy, was it neat to watch!  And I think one of the best things about it was to get back to work on Monday, tell my coworkers I had seen it, and have two different people instantly say, "'Bring Him Home' is such a good song!"  (I love my coworkers.)  That, and I overheard someone afterward saying "I thought he was going to jump off the bridge rail and just face-plant on the stage, and I was thinking, 'Uh... that's not going to sound like water.'"  Which, if you don't know Les Miserables, won't make any sense, but if you know it, you know what I'm talking about!  I had to try not to laugh, because I wasn't meaning to eavesdrop.

I'm in love with musicals.  Music has such a powerful effect on emotions, and I think the idea of telling a story through music is pure brilliance.  So here, for your enjoyment, are some of my favorite songs from my top three favorite musicals.




1) The Phantom of the Opera
I don't think I need to explain what this musical is about.  Most everyone knows it or, at least, has seen the movie.  The Phantom has a very special place in my heart, for many reasons, so mostly this musical is my favorite just because Phantom is one of my favoritest things ever. 

I think my favorite song is probably Music of the Night, and I love hearing Micheal Crawford sing it.  I think Crawford's voice is at it's best when he's singing something soft and slow, and his voice and this song are a perfect fit.  Gosh, this song is like a lullaby to me.  I go to my happy place when I listen to it.
(Warning:  When the song is over in this clip, it continues on to the next little bit of the musical, which means the Phantom is banging on his organ and making a racket.  It makes me jump every time.)

Now I'm going to throw a curve ball at you and give you one of my favorite Phantom songs that wasn't written by Andrew Lloyd Webber!  I know right?  There's a lesser known version by a guy named Ken Hill.  I bought the soundtrack from New Zealand, because that's the only way you can get it, just so I could have this one song.  Here's the Phantom in his Angel of Music persona, singing with Christine.  The song is titled "While Floating High Above."


Trivia time! Ken Hill and Andrew Lloyd Webber originally worked together on a Phantom of the Opera musical, but couldn't get along, so they split up and each made one of their own.  At the same time, a couple of guys from the U.S., Maury Yestin and Arthur Kopit, also decided to make a Phantom musical.  When they heard Webber was working on the same thing, they thought, "Crap!  He beat us to it!"  But then they saw Webber's play and thought, "Hey, his is pretty different from what we had.  We can still make ours!"  And they did.  I'm sorry to say I haven't actually listened to any music from their version, but there was a (songless) TV mini series made in 1990 that I've watched, and it was good.  I recommend looking it up, but give a warning to any purists: they took great liberties with the plot.

2) Les Miserables
Les Miserables is set in France in the early 1800s and follows the life of Jean Valjean.  (For those, like me, who can't make heads or tails out of how to pronounce French, that would be "jon vahl-jon" with, you know, that French pronunciation of the "j.")  He's released from his prison sentence cold and jaded, and then proceeds to rob a bishop, because, you know, if you're going to be bad, you might as well go all the way and rob someone holy. ;)  When the bishop forgives him, he's ashamed and turns his life around.  The plot goes on from there and pretty much consists of Valjean doing ridiculously good deeds whenever he gets the chance, in contrast to the world around him, which is bleak and harsh and occasionally violent.  All the while, he's technically a wanted man, and frequently has close calls with a fanatical policeman named Javert (jah-vehr) who refuses to believe Valjean is a changed man, and is determined to arrest him.

One of my favorite songs is "Stars" sung by Javert.  The song itself is rather harsh, almost startlingly so, but sums up his character very well.  Mostly, I just like it because I have a soft spot for Javert.  Also, when Phillip Quast sings it, I melt.  I adore that guys voice.  It's like melted dark chocolate.
(Also, holy sideburns, batman!)


Another favorite is called "On My Own" sung by a character named Eponine (eh-poe-neen).  She's in love with someone who's in love with someone else and is oblivious to her blatant flirting.  (If you really want to know, she's in love with Marius, who's in love with Cosette, who's the adopted daughter of Valjean.)


The songs "I Dreamed a Dream" and "Bring Him Home" are generally considered the best of the lot, and I recommend those, too.  If you really want to look into Les Miserables, there's a movie that's not half bad (although they turned Javert into a jerkwad), and there's always the original novel, although you'll definitely want to track down an abridged version.  Only a true fanatic like myself would tackle that 1500 page monster of a novel.

3) The Scarlet Pimpernel
Before I even get started, I want to say that a pimpernel is a flower.  The first time I heard the title all I really heard was a funny word that had "pimp" in it, so I just wanted to clarify there.

The Scarlet Pimpernel is set during the French revolution when, you know, everyone's getting their heads chopped off.  A British aristocrat, Percy Blakeney, decides that really sucks, so he, under the alias of "the Scarlet Pimpernel," and his friends, sneak over to France, rescue people who are going to be guillotined, and sneak them back to England and safety.  If you look up "perfection" or "hero" in the dictionary, it says, "see also: Percy Blakeney."  He's handsome, brilliant, fearless, talented, romantic, good-hearted, and more.  It's almost stupid how great he is.  But you can't help but like him anyway.  Especially when he keeps people from suspecting him by acting flamboyantly gay while in England.  (Although in the original novels he acted less gay and more silly and dull-witted.  They played it up for better comedy in the musical.)  The Scarlet Pimpernel is a fun, funny, swashbuckling, romantic story, where the good guys are good, the bad guys are bad, and in the end, they sword fight.  Exactly the kind of story I like!

One of my favorite songs is called "The Riddle."  You see, Percy's own wife, Marguerite, doesn't know he's the Scarlet Pimpernel, but she's old friends with a Frenchman named Chauvelin. (I think that's pronounced something like "sho-vlahn" but you sort of chop it off quick at the end and don't quite say the "n.")  He is in charge of tracking down the true identity of the Scarlet Pimpernel so they can guillotine him, too.  He blackmails Marguerite into helping him.  So Percy's keeping secrets from his wife, his wife is keeping the secret of her blackmail from him, and Chauvelin is just plain being a bad guy.
The first voice is Chauvelin, then Marguerite, and Percy is the not-as-deep voice coming in with the line "Through the mist your lover is beckoning."



My all time favorite song for this musical is called "Into the Fire," and it's sung by Percy as he rallies his friends to his cause.  It makes me want to go adventuring.


If you'd like to check out a couple of songs that are comedic, look up the song that's actually titled, "The Scarlet Pimpernel" which features a whole lot of people making wild guesses about who they think the Scarlet Pimpernel really is, and Percy popping up once in a while to say, "It's me!" but they all ignore him.  Percy relishes that they don't believe him.  Another is "The Creation of Man" which is gay-Percy in all his glory, singing about how God created men so they could be pretty.  It's a man's lot in life.

There's a (non-musical) TV mini series from the 80s that's wonderful, and some much older movies that are good as well.  I very much recommend looking those up.  The whole thing is based on a set of novels, which are so-so.  The stories are good, certainly, but it's rather badly written.  The writing style is a little amateurish and she tends to ramble sometimes.  Also, they're almost comically biased, making all French out to be bloodthristy low-lifes, and all French aristocrats out to be poor innocent victims (a large percentage of said aristocrats seem to be women and children).  But if you ever feel like looking into the further adventures of Percy Blakeney, give them a try.

And that's it.  My top three.  It was hard picking out just a couple songs to post.  They all have so many good ones.  If anyone has any favorite musicals they'd like to suggest to me, please do!  I'd love to check them out!