Twenty years ago, I went to see the great musical Les Miserables performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington. When I was growing up, my parents would take us for special occasions to a local dinner theater that performed all the Broadway classics. I first saw The Music Man when I was around eight years old, and I fell in love with musical theater. But I was not prepared for the experience of Les Mis.
Les Miserables is the stage adaptation of Victor Hugo’s classic novel. It is the story of Jean Valjean – a man who serves 19 years on the chain gang for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his family. In that revolutionary period in France, a convicted felon had always to carry a yellow ticket of parole, insuring him a life as an outcast. But when Valjean steals silver from a local priest, the priest forgives him. Valjean becomes inspired to start his life over again. He assumes a new identity and becomes such an upstanding citizen and businessman that he becomes mayor of the town.
Valjean’s nemesis is Inspector Javert, who believes that a man, once a criminal, is always a criminal. He believes in the merciless pursuit of the strict letter of the law, in right and wrong.
The story is complicated – Valjean adopts a destitute woman’s daughter, Cosette whom he raises as his own, who falls in love with Marius a fighter in the student riots of that fractious time in early 19th century Paris. The story is one of repentance and redemption, of love and forgiveness, of the fight for freedom and meaning and justice.
As I sat there in the darkened theater I was spellbound. It wasn’t just the music, which is so magnificent, or the scenery and set – it was the entire experience. The story lept out at me, and into me. I pined for Valjean’s redemption, I felt as if I were on the barricades with the student fighters,.
It didn’t stop there. I listened to Les Mis all the time – I read the novel – three times. And when I was studying at the Hebrew University ... view complete text