A great musical

The Original London Cast Recording of Les Miserables; Claude-Michel Schoenberg, composer

I had picked up and put down my copy of Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables” so many times, it broke. Instead of using a bookmark, I had continually lain the book down, like we all do, with the inside pages face down … on whatever surface was available. Eventually, the binding disintegrated, leaving me with two halves of a book. I finished reading the first half in the normal way one would read a book. But, with the second half, I had to rip the top page out of the broken binding, read the page, turn it over, read that page, then throw it into a garbage can.

I met a lot of people when I read the second half of “Les Miserables” during one of the cruises on the Golden Oddysey in 1990. Virtually nobody was shy in approaching me to tell me that they had “never seen anybody read a book that way.” The band, on that cruise, received an outstanding number of excellent comments on the comment cards because of “that nice piano player who was reading a book and throwing it away – one page at a time.”

The young girl who played the part of Cosette in the original Broadway cast of “Les Miserables” sang “Castle on a Cloud” on The Tonight Show in 1988 and I was entranced; both by the young girl and the song. I went to the Brookings Public Library the next day to borrow the cast recording. After making a tape of the album, I proceeded to destroy the tape by listening to it over and over and over, again and again and again and again. I LOVED this music.

And I love this story. A character who can rise to live a life of honor, integrity and all that is good amidst a base of wretchedness, angst, strife and despair brings hope beyond measure. Of course, there are numerous characters and instances that lend moralistic fiber to the tale, but I stand in awe of the virtuous Jean Valjean, one of the greatest heroes in all of literature.

I have seen this show three times and performed it as an orchestra member five times. I can’t get enough of it.

Credits: To Victor Hugo, for “Les Miserables” and “Notre Dame de Paris”, two giant books. I have never been so sad to finish books as when I finished these. It was like saying "Good-Bye" to a good friend.