We went yesterday to see one of the first teen productions of "Les Miserables," up in Fairfield, CT. It featured Kate and Robbie Greenberger, daughter and son of DC editor Bob Greenberger, in the ensemble. Working from a script that was custom-pared for high schools by the show's producers, the students performed admirably in one of the most demanding musicals in existence (how it's called a musical and not an opera, I don't know.) Particular standouts were the kids playing Valjean, Thenardier, Eponine, and I thought the kid who was playing Gavorche could easily step right into a professional production.
PAD
Posted by Peter David at August 4, 2003 11:17 AM | TrackBack | Other blogs commentingJust out of curiosity, how did they handle the more adult themes of Les Mis?
After the 10th Anniversary, the Broadway version modified some of the lyrics in the songs to make it more "family-friendly". (Some of the harsher language, for example, in the song Lovely Ladies...of course, the song's meaning remained the same.)
The High School version is a further modified version...I haven't had a chance to see it yet, but I expect it wasn't just modified for time constraints. But I don't think much would have to be done contentwise. Today's high schoolers can handle many of the adult themes.
And, yes, I have heard Les Miz referred to as a "musical opera", but it doesn't need the modifier. Every note of the libretto is sung. The orchestra is playing throughout. It's an opera. (But very few people in American society want to see an opera...musicals are much more popular...I suspect it's all in the marketing)
I get kind of lecture-like. I'm sorry. Please don't read on if this will offend you. I only write so much (and at all) because I'm passionate about this topic.
The line between a lot of opera and musicals is thin, with opera companies doing their own productions of lusher musicals (especially Sondheim musicals like Sweeney Todd) and broadway shows closely following or actually doing lighter operas (from Miss Saigon and Rent to Carmen Jones to La Boheme on Broadway). There are a few differences--musicals are always produced with economics in mind; that's why the length of the run of the show is determined by how well it sells from week to week. Operas (nowadays) usually have the number of performances set beforehand. The technical aspects of the two are also different. For one thing, musicals tend to have the smallest possible orchestra they can, as determined by union quotas. Operas can have big orchestras, maybe not as full as an orchestra devoted to playing instrumental concert music, but still fairly complete. For another, the singing style is different. With the exception of the young singers in La Boheme on Broadway, musical theater singers make different demands on their voices than do opera singers. It's as much of a difference as there is between Hungarian folk singing (which is pretty cool if you ever get a chance to hear it) and American jazz singing. Singers are trained one way or another because the tools they have to know how to use are different. Of course, musical theater and opera _are_ closely entwined--they both stem from the same tradition of vocal music, and if you listen to older musicals, say from the 30s, you'll find them even more like opera. It's just that they diverged and are finally coming together again.
Given that I've seen (and been in readings of) middle-school-friendly versions of Lysistrata, I can't imagine there aren't easy ways to tone down Les Mis.
(The unedited Lysistrata is a lot more fun, though. If anyone in the SF area is reading this, go to the Stanford summer theater's version later this week. Very, very worth it.)
TWL
from dictionary.com
Opera:
A theatrical presentation in which a dramatic performance is set to music.
Musical:
A play or movie that contains musical numbers.
From the dictionary definitions, Les Miz more closely resembles, in my opinion, an opera.
When you buy the "Complete Soundtrack" you don't just get a bunch of isolated songs. You get the entire performance.
In the average consumer's mind, a musical is a play with songs thrown in here and there. That is not Les Miz.
Maybe it's not an opera, but it's also not just a musical...maybe we need a third word...
To complicate matters, there's also the operetta (closer to many modern musicals than grand opera is) and that '70s innovation, the rock opera. Les Mis isn't either of those, either, but it's not just an either/or distinction.
And then there's the wonderful concept of "rock opera" (not to be confused with a "rock lobster).
IIRC, operas have no dialogue. There's also the total difference in song styles. Technically, Christ Superstar is a musical without dialogue (the music is too poppy to be considered operatic).
But I do go on.
The adult themes are all there. Madame Thernardier's line haven't been changed nor anything from "Lovely Ladies". It was a pleasure seeing it without someone watering it down thinking teens would be incapable of handling the subject matter. Peter's words are kind but as a proud parent, I gotta tell ya, this cast of kids played it with a lot of energy and the audience responded. Standing ovations three days running.
Just out of curiosity, how did they handle the more adult themes of Les Mis?
unless some major editing went into it since it was first modified for high-school productions (i saw it the very first time it was done, at holy trinity high school, where the guy who did the editing of the "adult" script, jim hoare, teaches theatre), the only real changes were were in some of the difficulty of the songs (some keys were changed), and some parts of songs were cut for time, but certainly not content, and that was about it.
of course, it has been a while since i saw it, so i could be forgetting some stuff. but that's what i remember. all in all, i enjoyed it.
-eD
I'm pretty conversant with the lyrics of "Les Mis," and the only song I believe had lyrics cut because of content was "Beggars at the Feast," which is the reprise of "Master of the House." The following lyric lines were missing, as Thenardier and his wife are watching guests moving about at a wedding:
"Here comes a prince
There goes a Jew
This one's a queer
but what can you do?"
It's possible those lines were removed to avoid hassle. But every other potentiall raunchy line, including all the lyrics of "Master of the House," were intact. And "Lovely Ladies" was definitely intact.
PAD
Actually many classic operas have spoken dialogue, 'The Magic Flute' has loads of it. The main differences between opera and musical are in the use of recitative (and there is a difference between recitative and something like 'Les Mis's' confrontation which is more conversational but still clearly a song.)
There are some, and they're probably just as correct who say that opera's sound like operas and musicals don't. At this point it's a fairly valid separation. There's a difference between singing opera and musical, even 'Les Mis,' although a lot of the performers in that show did come from an opera background (the Valjeans especially.)
I was one of the judges for the Paper Mill Theater's Rising Stars Program here in NJ - basically any high school in the state can apply and be judged; at the end of the season awards are given in pretty much every category you can think of. This year a high school did LM, and the young man playing Valjean was phenomenal. I, alas, didn't see the production, but he performed at the ceremony (as did all leading actor/actress nominees) and I was just blown away.
As far as the opera/musical theater dividing line, much ink has been spilled about where exactly it lies. For whatever it's worth, I think of Les Mis (and Sweeney Todd, as just one other example) as a musical, if only because it places the emphasis on the acting over the singing. LM COULD be done by an opera company - that is the score could stand it (as, say, Guys and Dolls couldn't), and it, in some way, would, in that performance, become an opera. Sweeney was done this year by Chicago Lyric Opera with Bryn Terfel, for example, and, I imagine, in that production was very much an opera 0 dialogue notwithstanding.
Leonard Bernstein once remarked -- in the TV feature about the recording of West Side Story with José Carreras and Kiri te Kanawa, IIRC -- that the difference is that in an opera the plot is advanced in the sung texts while in musicals (and, I should guess, operettas) it is advanced in the spoken dialogue between the musical numbers.
However, there are a lot of operas without recitative, including the aforementioned Magic Flute and Mozart's earlier "Die Entfuehrung aus dem Serail" (I've forgotten the official English title -- it's the first Mozart opera you see in "Amadeus"). The latter, btw, was originally classified as a "Singspiel" (singing-play), not an opera. And on the other end of the spectrum you have the recitative-less excesses of most Wagner operas (the operas that form the "Ring" for instance are a continuum, not a sequence of clearly defined arias and ensemble pieces (duets, tercets, quartets etc.) like a traditional opera, and also do without "proper" ouvertures).
Had Les Miserables been written a hundred or 150 years ago, it would have been called an opera, but I guess that it may have been a marketing decision to call it a musical. These days operas are - rightly or wrongly - no longer considered popular entertainment even when they are attended by mass audiences...
Tilman
Posted by Menshevik:
...and Mozart's earlier "Die Entfuehrung aus dem Serail" (I've forgotten the official English title -- it's the first Mozart opera you see in "Amadeus")...
Apropos of nothing (and no pun intended there...) Die Entführung aus dem Serail is usually translated as "The Abduction from the Seraglio"
In any case, to the extent that the point is that the difference between what's called a musical and what's called an opera is often a indistinct, grey area and not a hard and firm border, that's well worth keeping in mind.