Bloomington Civic Theatre
presents
A new production of
BOUBLIL and SCHÖNBERG’S
LES MISÉRABLES
Director KAREN WEBER
Music Director ANITA RUTH
Choreographer MICHAEL MATTHEW FERRELL
Audience Guide content by Rob Goudy, Associate Director
Sponsored by
Above: Planet by Victor Hugo (c. 1850)
This painting was the inspiration for Michael Hoover’s scenic design (below).
Welcome to BCT’s Les Misérables
Bonnie Erickson - Performing Arts
Director/Producer
On behalf of Bloomington Theatre and
Art Center, welcome to Les Misérables,
the show that made musical theater
history in 1987 when the American
version of the acclaimed London
production by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg with
lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer, opened on Broadway.
Over the course of its lifetime, Les Misérables has won
multiple Tony and other major awards internationally. Most
importantly, however, it has connected with the heart of its
worldwide audience in a way rarely experienced. Based on
Victor Hugo’s classic novel, Les Misérables reminds us we are
all of one family; a family not delineated by cities or states
or countries or continents. One family, longing for the same
individual liberty and peace.
This audience guide is designed to provide background
information on Victor Hugo, his historic novel, 1800s French
history and its significance to the piece, as a way of enhancing
your theater experience. Les Misérables is part of a diverse
theater season designed to entertain, educate and inspire our
audience of not only you, our patrons, but also our directors,
designers, performers and musicians.
Thank you for joining us!
Comments from the Director
Karen Weber, Director
The word most commonly used to
describe Les Misérables is “epic.”
It is a sprawling morality play, set
against a tumultuous period in French
history. That setting illuminates
and encapsulates the suffering
and oppression of generations of the French people, the
human spirit crying for an end to that suffering, and the
desperate measures taken to end it. In our American
psyche, “revolution” is a revered concept. We talk about the
American Revolution in the bright light of heroism, idealism,
and patriotism. The average Frenchman of today has been
taught a darker, more realistic vision of revolution and,
thanks to Hugo’s masterpiece being made into a musical, the
world now replays it over and over again.
A friend of mine grew up in France, was educated there,
and so was his father. He told me that like many other
Frenchmen, his father is not a fan of this musical. He feels
that it misses the point of Hugo’s book. He takes issue with
the musical because in his mind it characterizes the French
government and its monarchs as corrupt, and glorifies and,
so, over simplifies the sacrifices of the people. He thinks the
musical trivializes this painful time in French history with a
broad brush and capitalizes on the hellish setting of the play
more than the content of the storyline.
In his mind, the value of Hugo’s Les Misérables lies not in its
recounting of some of the darkest days in French history, but of
the journey out of the darkness of the human soul into the light
for its characters, particularly Valjean.
I would agree.
While our tendency may be to become enamored of the young
revolutionaries, their rousing call to arms, or the swashbuckling
fight at the barricade, the essence of this piece speaks to the
resiliency and transformative power of love for the human heart
that resonates in all men, regardless of geographical or political
boundaries. It is a study of our own demons and the struggle to
overcome them. It is about how we handle what the world throws
at us and the choices we make to either succumb or transcend.
Les Misérables is not an indictment of French History; it is a story
of one man’s path to transcendence. This is the history of all men.
Comments from the Music Director
Anita Ruth, Music Director
Many people ask me if Les Misérables
is an opera or a musical. When
thinking about what sets Les
Misérables apart from other shows
musically, the first words that come
to mind are “sung through;” sung
through in the sense that the music
never stops. Never.
We are used to this in the world of opera, but not in
the world of musical theater. Mostly in musicals there is
dialogue and there are songs. Sometimes the dialogue
interrupts the songs, but there are long passages of
spoken word. The general thought about musicals is
that people break into song when words are no longer
enough to express the emotions of the moment. Song
heightens emotions and gives characters a chance to
express themselves in a more dramatic fashion. But, in
Les Misérables, everything is sung. There are no sections
of dialogue. The story, being told completely in song, is
revealed on a much higher emotional level than is generally
done in musical theater. This most likely is an important part
of the great appeal of Les Misérables to audiences of all
ages. Musically there are soaring ballads and songs of great
passion. Both musical theater and opera have those.
So which is it – opera or musical theater? The answer is probably
neither, and both. Les Misérables takes its strengths from both
worlds, both in form and in music. Whatever we care to call it, it
is clear that the music drives the show and the characters – in an
unforgettable way.
Les Misérables Synopsis
Les Misérables is the story of Jean Valjean, a struggling everyman
whose fortunes play out against a vista of change and revolution in
19th century France.
In 1815, Valjean the convict leaves prison after serving 19 years
for stealing a loaf of bread. Prison officer Javert warns him of his
parole, affixing Valjean with a yellow ticket of leave. After the beatific
Bishop of Digne shows Valjean the possibilities of forgiveness and
redemption, Valjean tears apart his parole ticket and vows to start
anew.
In 1823, Valjean reappears as a successful factory owner and the
benevolent mayor of Montreuil-sur-Mer. He shows kindness to
Fantine, a destitute young mother wrongly fired from his factory
and forced into prostitution. Javert, now an Inspector of the Police,
continues to hunt the mysteriously disappeared parolee. Valjean
reveals his true identity to save an unjustly accused man and
ministers to Fantine on her deathbed, promising to save Fantine’s
young daughter Cosette from her villainous guardians, the sly
innkeeper Thénardier and his wife.
In 1832, Valjean’s fate reaches an apex as the Paris barricades rise
again. Cosette, now living with her kind adoptive father Valjean,
finds love with Marius, a proto-revolutionary student under the
thrall of the renegade Enjolras. The Thénardiers grift their way
through the streets of Paris while their daughter Eponine pines for
an unaware Marius. The street urchin Gavroche slips in and out of
the action, filling the gaps and sparking the fires. Javert’s continued
pursuit seems near a climactic conclusion. What will the barricades
bear? “It is the future that they bring when tomorrow comes…”
Victor Hugo: The Romantic Revolutionary
As the foremost poet, playwright, novelist, and progressive
politician of 19th century France, Victor Hugo embodied the spirit
of an age. A leader of the Romantic movement in literature, Hugo
rejected the more rigid constructions of classicism, embracing the
wildness of raw nature and celebrating the guidance of emotion
over intellect. His keen empathy for the lower classes fostered
a sense of responsibility that blossomed into a vocal campaign
for a citizen-led Republic. With these principles, Hugo’s writings
embraced the sweep of history and the possibility of change.
“More intensely and more consistently than others, [Hugo] believed
that writers had a mission, that they were to be the educators
and leaders of the recently awakened peuple, that they were to
regenerate society, prepare the future, and write, as it were, on
paper and in life, the immanent epic of humanity’s progress.”
–Victor Brombert, Victor Hugo and the Visionary Novel, 1984
“From his earliest writings Hugo insisted on the social responsibility
of the writer, and after 1850 conceived of himself as a spiritual
guide, whose vocation it was to reveal the providential order
underlying personal and historical events.”
–Suzanne Nash, “Victor Hugo” in The New Oxford Companion to
Literature in French, 1995
“Hugo is a romantic, and a [supporter of the Republic]: he believes
in individual acts, even heroic individual acts, and he believes that
liberty is the precondition of that kind of heroism.”
–Adam Gopnik, Introduction to the Modern Library Les Misérables, 2008
“The essence of Hugo’s god is love.”
–Henri Peyre, Victor Hugo, 1980
“Why should I right this wrong?
When I have come so far
And struggled for so long?
If I speak, I am condemned
If I stay silent, I am damned…”
–Jean Valjean, Les Misérables, Act I, Scene 4
Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables
Begun in Paris in 1845 and completed in the English Channel Islands
during political exile in 1861, Les Misérables marked Victor Hugo’s
growth from a working class sympathetic royalist to a republicembracing revolutionary. In the book he explores the contradictions
of humanity (the honest convict, the vengeful policeman, the
virtuous prostitute) and embraces a dialectic view of history, in
which the clash of opposing forces (dark vs. light, civilian vs. the
law, order vs. chaos) shapes history and provokes change. With this
masterpiece, Hugo simultaneously captured the triumphant tumult
of 19th century France and affected the fall of the empire leading to
a new citizen-led Republic in 1870.
“The book that the reader has before his eyes at this moment is,
from one end to the other, […] a step from bad to good, from the
unjust to the just, from the false to the true, from night to day, from
appetite to awareness, from rottenness to life; from bestiality to
duty, from hell to heaven, from nothingness to God. Starting point:
matter; end point: the soul. A hydra in the beginning, an angel at
the end.”
–Victor Hugo, Les Misérables, Modern Library Translation by Julie
Rose, 2008
“Accepting will, passion, lust, cruelty, rage, and violence—all the
things Les Misérables describes—as inevitabilities of life, we can
still believe in compassion, liberty, and light as the possibilities
of civilization. The light of the mind is visible in the human eyes,
[Hugo] tells us, and he means it.”
–Adam Gopnik, Introduction to the Modern Library Les Misérables, 2008
“Just as a pupil dilates in darkness, so ‘the soul dilates in
misfortune,’ until at last it finds God. Valjean’s salvation, literally
and metaphorically, depends on a fall.”
–Victor Brombert, Victor Hugo and the Visionary Novel, 1984
“In every case, where we recall a simple morality play, Hugo gives
us a complicated essay on chance, contingency, and cruel workings
of moral necessity.”
–Adam Gopnik, Introduction to the Modern Library Les Misérables, 2008
“… Hugo’s God is no longer the authoritarian divine principle
hierarchically and sublimely situated above, but emerges from a
subterranean darkness, from chaotic and dynamic human suffering
and human becoming. That is what police inspector Javert, who
lives by the faith that God is allied with law and order, is made
to discover through Valjean’s magnanimity. The discovery that
God rises from the lower depths comes as a great shock to the
relentlessly righteous Javert...”
–Victor Brombert, Victor Hugo and the Visionary Novel, 1984
“I am reaching but I fall
And the stars are black and cold
As I stare into the void
Of a world that cannot hold…
–Javert, Les Misérables, Act II, Scene 6
“For the wretched of the earth
There is a flame that never dies
Even the darkest night will end
And the sun will rise.”
–Les Misérables, Act II, Scene 8
The Insurrection of June 1832:
Victor Hugo Rebuilds the Barricades
Combat devant l’hôtel de ville - 28.07.1830, Jean-Victor Schnetz
France 1789-1871: An Era of Revolutions
The French Revolution as we know it typically refers to events
beginning with the storming of the Bastille in 1789 and ending with
Napoleon Bonaparte’s rise in 1799. Among the most notable events
of this period was Robespierre’s “Reign of Terror,” the execution
by guillotine of tens of thousands of French nobles, including King
Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Although Les Misérables primarily
takes place during the constitutional monarchy of King Louis Phillipe
in the 1830s, the original revolution launched France into a near
century of constant upheaval as the industrial revolution flared and
the government transformed from republic to empire and
monarchy many times over.
“No nation in modern history has seen so many political options
played out over the space of one lifetime. In Les Misérables Hugo
is writing a kind of account book of all those possibilities, and the
credits and debits they had incurred.”
–Adam Gopnik, Introduction to the Modern Library Les Misérables, 2008
“Liberal and democratic principles had been laid down, the
sovereignty of the nation recognized. Monarchy had been abolished
and a king and queen executed. The Church and aristocracy had
been subjected to sustained assault. Thus, precedents had been
established and allegiances formed which were to be passed on to
succeeding generations. The fears and aspirations which had been
generated created agendas for the following century. The masses
had entered the political arena.”
–Roger Price, A Concise History of France, 2005
“Revolution became for Hugo the life-giving force of modern history.
But the monstrosity of revolutionary violence, which truly obsessed
him, also explains the dream of transcending revolution, of seeking
a higher harmony through an exit from history...”
–Victor Brombert, Victor Hugo and the Visionary Novel
“Citizens, the nineteenth century is great, but the twentieth century
will be happy. Then there will be nothing left of old history; there will
be no more fear, like there is today […]. You could almost say: There
will be no more events. People will be happy. The human race will live
up to its law, just as the terrestrial globe lives up to its law; harmony
will be reestablished between the soul and the star. The soul will
gravitate around the truth, just as the star does around the light.”
–Enjolras, Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, Modern Library Translation
by Julie Rose, 2008
In June 1832, King Louis Phillipe was two years into his reign. France
was left reeling by a recent cholera epidemic, especially the povertystricken working class. A worker’s strike at the silk factories in
Lyon had further increased their collective agitation. In the middle
classes, republic-hungry dissidents sought alliances with their
working brethren through the organization of revolutionary groups
similar to Les Misérables’s “Friends of the ABC.” When working
class sympathizer and Napoleonic War hero General Lamarque
succumbed to the cholera epidemic, the steaming pot of discontent
boiled over. His funeral on June 5, 1832 launched the march to the
barricades immortalized by Victor Hugo and popularized by the
musical Les Misérables.
“…The big city is like a canon; when it’s loaded, all that’s needed is
a flying spark, and off it goes. In June 1832 that spark was the death
of General Lamarque.
Lamarque was a man of action and renown. Under both the Empire
and the Restoration, one after the other, he had enjoyed the two
forms of bravery necessary to the two epochs, bravery on the
battlefield and bravery at the rostrum. He was as eloquent as he
had been valiant; you could feel the sword in what he said […].
Napoléon died uttering the word armée, Lamarque uttering the
word patrie—homeland.”
–Victor Hugo, Les Misérables, Modern Library Translation by Julie
Rose, 2008
“On his funeral day they will honour his name
With the light of rebellion ablaze in their eyes
From their candles of grief we will kindle our flame
On the tomb of Lamarque shall our barricade rise!”
–Enjolras, Les Misérables, Act I, Scene 8
“The last guns were silenced barely twenty-four hours after hostilities
had begun. The casualty toll among the insurgents, mounting as
high as 800 dead and wounded, was particularly heavy because the
people of Paris withheld their support, leaving most of the committed
insurgents of June 1832 to pay for their rebellion with their lives.”
–Mark Traugott, The Insurgent Barricade, 2010
“…Hugo recognizes [the June Insurrection] from the beginning
as doomed and probably pointless, and certainly from a narrow
strategic point of view counterproductive. It keys his great
meditation on the difference between a riot and a revolution, a
difference which Hugo, a passionate revolutionary, is willing to
concede is much smaller and more contingent than one might like.”
–Adam Gopnik, Introduction to the Modern Library Les Misérables, 2008
“Hugo’s political intent—his credo—is very specific and posits the
political inevitability of the Republic. In short, Hugo maintains that
if bourgeois readers become politically active, they will thereby
reconcile their power with their moral obligations, and thus join the
revolutionary movement…”
–Angelo Metzidakis, “On Rereading French History in Hugo’s Les
Misérables,” The French Review, 1993
A Tricolor Timeline Pre‐ 1790 1790 1800 1810 1820 French History 1789: The Storming of the Bastille. The French Revolution begins. 1792: The First Republic is established. Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette are executed. 1799: Napoleon comes to power. 1804: Napoleon crowns himself emperor of the First Empire. A series of military successes brings most of Europe under his control. 1814: Louis XVII, brother of Louis XVI, crowned King of a new Monarchy. 1815: The Battle of Waterloo officially ends Napoleon’s years of leadership in France. 1825: The youngest brother of Louis XVI ascends as King Charles X. 1830 1830: In a coup, the bourgeoisie install King Louis‐Phillipe in a new constitutional monarchy. 1832: General Lamarque dies in June; a barricade follows. 1840 1848: The nephew of Napoleon, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, is elected President of the Second Republic. 1850 1851: Louis Napoleon is crowned Napoleon III of the Second Empire. 1870 1870: The Prussians invade France. The Empire collapses, and the Third Republic rises. The Life of Victor Hugo 1802: Born in Besançon. His father serves in Napoleon’s army as an aide‐de‐camp to the Emperor’s brother Joseph. 1815: Now a General, Hugo’s father fights at Waterloo. 1818: In Paris, Hugo begins work on his first novel. 1827: The preface to his play Cromwell establishes Hugo as the leader of French Romanticism. 1831: Notre‐Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre Dame) is published. 1832: Hugo notes the June Insurrection in his diary, but does not participate. 1845: Hugo begins Jean Tréjean, the first draft of Les Misérables. 1848: Elected to the Constituent Assembly, stalling work on Les Misérables. 1852: Hugo’s criticism of the Second Empire leads to political exile on England’s Channel Islands. 1862: Les Misérables is published during exile. 1870: Hugo returns to Paris a national hero. 1885: Hugo dies in Paris. Jean Valjean’s Journey 1769: Born in the French countryside. 1796: Valjean is sentenced to Toulon for 5 years for stealing a loaf of bread for his sister’s starving family. 1803: Valjean’s sentence is extended after several escape attempts. Javert begins work at Toulon. 1815: Jean Valjean is released. Following his encounter with the Bishop of Digne, he breaks parole and starts anew. 1817: As M. Madeleine, he opens the Montreuil‐sur‐Mer factory. 1823: Fantine is fired from the factory and eventually dies. Valjean reveals his true identity, then becomes Cosette’s guardian. 1830: Valjean, under an assumed name, lives in the Rue Plumet in Paris with Cosette. 1832: Valjean joins the barricades to save Marius. 1833: Valjean dies.