For those who want to be the first in their herd to hear the score for this big London musical hit, Important Record Distributors has imported copies of the original cast recording of the 1985 Cameron Mackintosh/Royal Shakespeare Company presentation. The production photos on the dust jacket of the two-record album can only hint at the show`s spectacular staging, by Trevor Nunn and John Caird (see The Arts, Nov. 24). However, the songs themselves come across with compelling power and urgency.
Listeners will note resemblances between the Herbert Kretzmer lyrics
(translated from the French of Alain Boubil) and Claude-Michel Schonberg music of this pop opera to songs in such earlier musicals as ”Oliver!”,
”Cats” and ”Sweeney Todd”; but the score, from big, choral numbers
(”Master of the House”) to soft, poignant solos (”Empty Chairs at Empty Tables”), has a stirring dramatic thrust of its own.
Principal singers are Colm Wilkinson, as the heroic ex-convict Jean Valjean in Victor Hugo`s story, and the American actress Patti LuPone, who sings the ballad ”I Dreamed a Dream.”
