Ice musical. Dracula

Let's continue the theme of musicals. Today I’ll tell you about Frank Wildhorn’s magnificent musical “Dracula” directed by Andreas Gergen.

The musical "Dracula" is not a 100% German product (like "Elisabeth", in fact), however, the success of this production came precisely thanks to the European production. The premiere took place in 2007 at the Graz Festival, cast: Thomas Borchert (Dracula), Carolina Vasicek (Lucy), Lynn Lichti (Mina), Uwe Kröger (Van Helsing), Jesper Tuden (Jonathan Harker).

Where to start? Yeah, I know. From the disclaimer. Just as I’m not a fan of the whole vampire production, I’m not familiar with Stoker’s book, and I haven’t seen the film either. So the plot remained a closed book for me at some points. I had to watch the 1992 film adaptation, although my aversion to the vampire theme did not go away. Even from a great cast. The film raised even more questions, but I understood where Jackson got his Uruk-Hai and monkeys from (where vampires have WOOL from is absolutely unclear to me, but oh well). Let me briefly note the similarity of the images of Van Helsing (Uve Kröger is good at being a freak, as it turned out), Harker and the updated Dracula, who drank blood. Oldman dresses similarly freakishly, portraying an elegant dandy.

The production is very unique and quite different from what I have already seen. The director's excellent idea to divide the stage into two zones and combine different plot lines gives the action almost cinematic dynamics and at the same time makes life easier for the set designer - he is required to have a minimum of interior design and high-tech bells and whistles. I was very pleased with the “Ikea cubes” in Dracula’s castle.

Dracula and an Ikea interior, with Mina in the foreground.

Another find is “living pictures”: a crowd at a train station in Budapest, the finale of the first act is the appearance of Dracula in London (“Ein Leben mehr”), the finale of the second act is the hero-Kröger cosplaying the figure of the Hammerman in the mine. I don’t know how it was staged on Broadway, but the Austrian version is very original and at the same time quite laconic.

Music and characters.

I was tempted by the queen, but I did not succumb, I swear!

You have been deceived, this is not a Mexican jerboa, this is a Shanghai leopard.

In general, the music is very beautiful and memorable, although sometimes there are too many “beauties”. Because of this, at times the musical looks like a flower garden for a novice summer resident - “but I’ll plant many, many bright flowers here, and it will be a great time.” “Get hurt” does work, only in a different sense – when looking at a flowerbed, your eyes run at the speed of light in several directions at once. Catch them later. To be fair, I will say that there are few such places in Dracula.

I read that after the failure of the musical on Broadway, Wildhorn partially rewrote the score and re-arranged some numbers. It turned out quite strong. Although this particular musical cannot be sung with bad voices. It's just not possible. The result will be Hollywood “Miserables”, and without Samantha Barks. Or, God forgive me, Moulin Rouge (no, I will never get tired of kicking THAT).

I really like Dracula's part - such a cute troll at the beginning, and clearly a progressive vampire with rocker habits later on. Thomas Borchert is brilliant.

This is what real evil spirits should be like. Sommerhalder, study. They'll eat you up and won't even choke on you. The troll nature of Comrade Borchert, however, rushes at the very beginning - this is his “Kommen Sie hierein”, pronounced with the intonation “nothing threatens you now, but give me time to find my dentures, and everything will change!” simply gorgeous. Yes, and finally I appreciated the meaning of the statement “Transylvania is not England.” Wildhorn's Dracula is distinguished by the habits of a serf-owner - he starves his maidens and himself does not wear fangs that interfere with singing and speaking normally. Poor girls lisp with all their might, but this one completely ignores the vampire paraphernalia. Dude. Oh yes, speaking of dudes - the Mexican jerboa Shanghai leopard in the scene "Long live the new me!" (Ein perfectes Leben) killed. They could have dressed the Count more decently.

Jonathan Harker (Jesper Tuden). Tuden is good always and everywhere, he is especially good at romantic roles. The “queens”, of course, seduced him, but hungry vampires are what they are. And he himself, tea, not Ivan Vasilyevich Bunsha, is young and green, and here the girls are like that. Dracula has good taste, however, he saved such a fresh and healthy lawyer for himself.

Mine (Lynn Lichty). She’s good for everyone, but the constant “brow-brows” are tiring. Just like Jackson's Frodo of ill memory. Compared to Borchert and even Tuden, the voice fades. However, against the background of Borchert, many people are lost, even Kroeger had to work hard.

By the way, about Kroeger. The consignment Van Helsing could have been stronger. She could just be. Three songs in two hours of action is not a party, sorry. Especially for Uwe Kröger. Yes, his voice is no longer the same as it was in “Elizabeth”. Although in "Rebecca", which was shown approximately simultaneously with "Dracula", it was very much the same. He doesn't know how to cheat. Inconvenient range? Or an unusual format of action? Perhaps both at the same time. The only normal number is “Zu Ende” - and that one is paired with Dracula. It’s better not to remember “Nosferato” at all - three or four verses from there could easily be thrown out. I don’t even remember the song about his wife. The director wanted to make Van Helsing a bore freak? If so, then we can only congratulate him. I will remain in my opinion: this is clearly not Kroeger’s best role, and not his role at all. Oh yes, I almost forgot. Raincoat. It seems that the professor was fishing somewhere (with aspen stakes and a hammer in his bag - I always walk like that too), and it was there, while fishing, that Lucy’s fiancé picked him up.

Lucy (Carolina Vasicek). She’s good in both guises, but I don’t really understand the meaning of these baby bib-bonnets on a young and healthy vampire. Well, in fact, some kind of matinee in kindergarten. Correction: Wednesday and Fester Addams go to this kindergarten.

Memories: I can watch/listen to several numbers endlessly. This is "Ein Leben mehr", "Ein perfektes Leben", "Zu Ende". I mostly listen to the latter, because the sight of a disheveled intellectual maniac with slipping glasses and a crucifix in his hands causes a fit of healthy laughter, and, it seems, not only me - Borchert giggles too. Sorry, Ove. Well, and, of course, the ending is not Titanic.

I'll throw some links to the music here.

Love and death. These words are the soul and heart of this story... The musical "Dracula - Between Love and Death" is a unique interpretation of Bram Stoker's novel - the story of a warrior prince who, for the sake of love for a woman, is ready to doom himself to eternal damnation just to be with her. After killing his beloved, he wanders alone in eternity, looking for the one for whom he sacrificed everything, and without whom he cannot find peace.

"Bruno Pelletier has outdone himself in the title role.
Never before had he been so obsessed with a character, never more convincing in his performance. With perfect control of his body and gestures, he completely disappears to give way to his hero, seductive, sexy and disturbing at the same time. Peltier shows us more than a beautiful voice: he is regal."

First performance: January 31, 2006
A country: Canada
Genre:
Libretto: Roger Tabra
Composer: Simon Leclerc
Director: Gennady Gladiy

Cast:
Dracula– Bruno Pelletier
Elmina/Mina– Andree Watters
Jonathan– Sylvain Cossette
Renfield– Daniel Boucher
Van Helsing– Pierre Flynn
Lucy– Gabrielle Destroismaisons
Vampires– Rita Tabbakh, Elizabeth Diaga, Brigitte Marchand

The musical takes place between the 15th and 21st centuries. In 1476, Prince Vlad the Impaler rules the lands of Wallachia. He is a brave but cruel warrior who knows no mercy. As a guarantee of peace, the king of Hungary offers the prince to marry his daughter Elmina. And when Vlad saw her for the first time, his conqueror's heart was won. But the beautiful Elmina had a terrible secret - the girl was a vampire. Not wanting to be separated from his beloved ever, Vlad allows her to bite him. The frightened peasants, declaring Elmina a witch and the murderer of their master, kill her, and the prince himself is put in a cage. Having got out, Vlad vows to take revenge on the whole world for the death of his wife.

More than 5 centuries pass. Prince Tepes, aka Dracula, exists in darkness and brings death while trying to find his Elmina. Meanwhile, Professor Van Helsing's daughter Lucy asks her father to let her go. A young idealist is full of desire to change the world for the better, and her father’s guardianship does not allow her to see the dark sides of life. Journalist Jonathan and his drug-addicted photographer Renfield, who is unrequitedly in love with Lucy, on the contrary, know everything about human vices and suffering. Dracula senses Elmina's presence through Renfield and makes a deal with the photographer - he will bring the girl to him, and in gratitude he will receive Lucy. Van Helsing's daughter herself appears in the domain of the prince of darkness and falls in love with him. Having turned the girl into a vampire, Dracula realizes in despair that this is not his Elmina. They begin to hunt for Lucy, and Van Helsing himself kills his daughter. Unaware of this, Renfield brings the alt-modernist Mina, Jonathan Harker's fiancée, to Dracula, and Dracula realizes that she is the reincarnation of Elmina...

Leading actor Bruno Pelletier had been toying with the idea of ​​creating his own musical for several years. After the wild success of "Notre-Dame De Paris" all over the world, he refused to participate in many productions in order to bring to life his project - the musical "Dracula", in which he also acted as art director and co-producer.

The performance included more than 30 compositions of completely different styles: such as the passionate tango "Mysterieux personage" ("Mysterious Stranger"), the lyrical "Mina" ("Mina") and the philosophical reflection on the fate of the world "Nous sommes ce que nous sommes" ( "We are who we are"). To the phonogram, recorded in advance, two musicians were also added - a guitarist and a keyboard player, playing live on stage. The exoticism of the musical was also given by the fact that some songs were performed in Ukrainian, for example, “Tsvet Teren,” and the phrases “love and death” and “my love” were also periodically repeated. Large-scale two-level decorations fill the stage, but at the same time allow free movement, and various images appear on a screen mounted behind, on a curtain, in frames, on the scenery. All this, together with the beautiful lighting design and the costumes of the main characters, mostly made of leather, allows you to plunge into a completely different world - cruel, but beautiful.

The creators of the musical show not just a love story, but the history of the modern world. A world that we destroy with our own hands. Endless wars, religion trampled into the mud, self-destruction as a way of life, a future that may not exist... and the need to fight for what you believe in and love, and sacrifice yourself in the name of this love.

The musical is unique, not everyone will understand it, not everyone will like it, but it is difficult to remain indifferent. The main feature is the gloomy atmosphere and heavy music. There are, of course, lyrical compositions, but mostly it is high-quality rock. Bruno Peletier, aka Dracula, is inimitable. Complete transformation. It seems that he deliberately did everything in order not to associate the audience with the charming Gringoire. A hoarse voice, amazing plasticity, powerful energy - the entire musical rests on it. Personally, I didn’t feel sorry for Lucy, or Renfield, or Van Helsing. Only Dracula. Feelings after watching? Goosebumps and an uncontrollable desire to jump up with the audience and give a standing ovation to the actors.

My post is about a Canadian French-language musical Dracula, Entre L "amour Et La Mort (Dracula. Between love and death).I want to warn you right away that this is a very free interpretation of Bram Stoker. In fact, all that remained of the characters were their names. They say that the plot is based on the film "Bram Stoker's Dracula" (1992), but since this film is still in my unwatched folder, I cannot judge. The action begins in the 15th century, then moves to 2050. I quote from the description “The Count, doomed to eternal suffering because of his deceased loved one, strives through the centuries to find his Elmina, in the name of which he commits terrible atrocities. In 2050, the Count of Night meets a charming activist, in whom he recognizes his wife, who granted him immortality for 500 years ago... Formerly formidable and warlike, today he is a prisoner of eternity, which he chose by loving a woman. A lost love that he vowed to find through the centuries. The Count will give up at nothing to complete this quest, while at the same time, opening up a completely different understanding man and evil."

But now I want to go through the characters in detail: I’ll start with the most insignificant ones.

Vampiresses. Excellent voices, good acting, but when I saw them for the first time, I thought, “Dear Mom! I’ll dream about these at night, you can’t brush them aside with a mattress!” Their makeup is very unique. However, this is only the first impression, then you realize that this is exactly what they should be: to cause horror and attract at the same time.

Van Helsing. Yes, in the musical Van Helsing is relegated to the category of minor characters, but the actor who played him, Pierre Flynn, did an excellent job. Honestly, I don’t know what else can be said about this hero. His song “Why” penetrates the soul. I feel sorry for him.

Lucy. And now, Stoker fans, get ready, in the musical Miss Westenra magically turns into... Van Helsing's daughter! The girl definitely gets tired of living under the tutelage of her father, she runs away, falls into the arms of Dracula and becomes a vampire. As a result, she was killed by her own father. Lucy has a sense of character, she is rebellious, and to some extent naive, she wants adventure. I really liked how actress Gabrielle Detroimaison handled the role. Wonderful voice and acting.

Renfield. Renfield is Jonathan's photographer here. Addict. Hopelessly in love with Lucy. Daniel Boucher plays this role SO well that, willy-nilly, you begin to doubt the normality of the actor. But he's normal. Just complete fusion with the role. Brilliant. As a character, I personally don’t like Renfield; sympathy, maybe, but no sympathy. And not because he makes a deal with Dracula and essentially betrays his friends, but because he is a drug addict. He himself is to blame for what he has come to, and it is stupid to blame Lucy or Dracula here.

Jonathan. IMHO, but purely outwardly Sylvain Cossette does not resemble Jonathan. A little older. But the voice, the voice is wonderful. And his hairstyle just kills me (I immediately remember the fanfic “Two-Faced Love”). The make-up artist is on the soap! And so, the character is presented as he should be. He loves Mina dearly and is ready to fight for his love. I think Mina did the right thing by choosing him over Dracula. and you can beat me with your slippers!

Elmina/Mina Andre Watters had to play two roles. First, the queen of vampires, the wife of the count, and then the same activist from the future into whom Elmina’s soul incarnated. Both roles are performed with a bang in terms of technique, but (this is not the actress’s fault!), if Elmina is shown extremely vividly, then Mina... Her character is not revealed at all. Well, she's no good! (in the photo is Mina, I couldn’t find Elmina)

*And finally, I got to him:*

Count Dracula It was performed by Bruno Peletier. I begin to sing praises. My opinion here will be biased, because I sincerely admire both Bruno’s creativity, vocal abilities, and acting abilities. But all critics came to the conclusion that Peletier had outdone himself. He completely got used to the role, we don’t see Bruno on stage, we see Vlad the Impaler - Count Dracula. How he plays, how he sings... Words are meaningless here - you just have to see it. Bruno's Dracula evokes mixed feelings. On the one hand, I feel incredibly sorry for him, but on the other, in some moments. You are well aware that in front of you is a count of darkness, merciless and cruel. And yet, in the musical, Dracula is not shown as absolute evil. A suffering and contradictory character. An unusually bright image.

Of course, this is not all that can be said about this truly brilliant musical in every sense. He is very ambiguous. You can talk for a long time about the plot, about how the problems of our time are shown, you can find fault... But I’ll wrap it up. I will probably return to this topic again))) The musical is amazing, I really recommend it to everyone who is partial to this genre. and those who are indifferent too;) It’s never too late to change your mind;)

When purchasing 4 tickets, get a 25% discount using the promo code "DRACULA3+1!" The discount is valid until December 2, 2017 (inclusive)

December 3 at the Small Sports Arena Luzhniki production center ICE VISION will present the mystical ice musical “Dracula. A story of eternal love" based on the novel "Dracula" by Bram Stoker. Famous Russian artists took part in the preparation of the performance: Ivan Okhlobystin, Helavisa(group Mill), Alexander Krasovitsky(group Animal Jazz) and others.

The main roles will be played by soloists of world ice shows, ice acrobats, aerialists, who appear before the audience in the image of the heroes of the novel: lovers Mina and Jonathan, young Lucy, the first to die from a vampire bite, decisive and brave Van Helsing, who devoted his life to the fight against dark forces, hungry and merciless vampires and, of course, the sinister Count Dracula. In the role of Mina - Ekaterina Bok, in the role of the sinister Dracula - IN aldis mintas.

The heroes of the show were voiced by famous artists, theater and film actors. Van Helsing, a hunter of evil spirits, a doctor of occult sciences and a mystic, will speak in the voice of the popular Russian actor, writer and philosopher Ivan Okhlobystin. Helavisa, the leader of the group The Mill, will perform a song by Lucy, the charming friend of Mina Harker, who became the Earl's first victim in London. Alexander Krasovitsky (lead singer of Animal Jazz and Zero People) will perform a song by Renfield, a patient in a mental hospital and Dracula’s faithful servant.

Viewers will become direct participants in the show thanks to 3D mapping technologies and audio and light installations. The author of the soundtrack is a young St. Petersburg composer Alexey Galinsky, who wrote the music for the ice performances: “Princess Anastasia”, “Alice in Wonderland”, “Alice Through the Looking Glass”, “The Nutcracker and the Lord of Darkness”. Alexey became the author of the work “Olympia”, written specifically for the figure skating exhibition performances at the Olympic Games in Sochi 2014, as well as the soundtrack to the film “Shadowboxing 3”.

Late 19th century, London. Young lawyer Jonathan Harker and his beloved Mina are getting married. But, due to his duty, Jonathan is forced to leave his bride alone and go to Transylvania to visit an elderly count who wants to buy property in London...

PLACES FOR IMMORTAL SPECTATORS

Meal'n'Real! Exclusive “Seats for Immortals” - a table for 6 people in the stalls at the edge of the ice, right in the center of the action! An abundance of exquisite dishes, red wines aged for years, meat with blood and silver cutlery - all this will protect the most desperate spectators of the ice musical "Dracula" from the risk of being bitten by vampires rushing past!

Enjoy the pleasant cold of icy vampire hearts! Look into the eyes of Count Dracula himself! Feel like part of an otherworldly world! This chance was given only to you, one of the 5,000 human souls sitting in the hall! The sale of this exclusive table is declared open! The count valued 6 seats for immortal spectators at 666,000 rubles!

In memory of himself, the Count will give the “immortal table” a painting with his portrait, carried through centuries and distances. The author of the painting will leave an autograph with real human blood!

Duration:2 hours 30 minutes (including 20 minute intermission)

See you at Luzhniki! It will be terribly interesting!

Dracula, entre l'amour et la mort (2006)

I have long wanted to watch the 2006 musical “Dracula: Between Love and Death” with Bruno Pelletier in the title role, and now it has happened. I’ll say right away that what personally pleased me most about the musical was... Bruno Pelletier in the title role.

But in order. I’ll make a reservation about music, as they say, “out of the gate”: I don’t understand it. At all. At all. The only thing I can say is that I really liked the music in “Notre Dame,” for example. So, I also like the music in “Dracula” and it seems melodic and sometimes expressive. But at Notre Dame there is more. Moreover, it remains unclear why suddenly Mina... mmm... started playing hard rock, and oriental motifs sounded in the aria of the vampiress in Dracula's castle.

All in all, listen musical is nice. It has settled on my computer and has been accompanying my everyday life for more than a week. But I try not to look at the screen. Why?..

I don’t know what the artist was smoking, why the artist was working “to get rid of it.” Perhaps he was lazy. Perhaps he is simply untalented. Perhaps the Montreal theater had no money at all (this, unfortunately, happens), but they wanted to organize a Spectacle.

And you can’t say that he doesn’t make an attempt to reveal the essence of the characters through costumes. But HOW it’s all done!

Here is Dracula and his wife (in the musical they retained the romantic line introduced after Stoker) singing about how Evil...

No, don’t ask me why Madame Tepes is wearing an SS cap with a veil. I don't know. I really do not know. Perhaps this is how the creators of the musical imagined the kokoshnik.

Make-up and fragment of the costume of the hero-lover:

Sorry, for God's sake, but - inspired by:

However, all the characters there are dressed like homeless people in a sad and eclectic way:

Well, okay, Renfield can be forgiven, he’s a drug addict here, but Mina, Mina? Was it really impossible for the actress to sew decently sitting pantsuit? I’m not even talking about Harker: it’s easy to disfigure a short and plump artist by dressing him in baggy clothes and making him up so that Quasimodo from “Notre Dame de Paris” performed by Garou seems like a femme fatale. The material - at least on screen - looks terribly cheap. In general, one gets the feeling that the actors were dressed in a hurry “from selection” - moreover, from a social play about the bottom of the city. All the characters are in modern clothes (the action is moved to 2050), and for some reason Van Helsing is in a completely archaic cloak. However, this makes one wonder why exactly 2050, and not, say, 2012... In case of any attacks on eclecticism, one can answer: the fashion of the future!

Here's Lucy in her half-emo, half-goth guise. That is, vampires, they dress like this here:

And - at the end - in the midst of a heartfelt scene of the posthumous reconciliation of Van Helsing and Lucy (here she is his daughter, but oh well), Lucy’s “angelic” outfit is revealed. In my opinion, one well-known couturier will be shown this suit in hell as punishment for the military uniform he designed:

And finally, the libretto. Again, I can't rate quality French poems, but a colossal amount of abstract reasoning about evil and social injustice is squeezed into the text. I was especially impressed by the aria in which Dracula convinces Jonathan and Renfield that people are even worse than ghouls: they “killed Kennedy and Che Guevara” and “gave birth to Bin Laden, Stalin [thank you for this neighborhood, good Canadians] and Castro” [in this where Che Guevara, who was innocently killed, was very offended for his comrade-in-arms and for the “great Marxist” too - tea, they were doing one thing].

As you already understand, the plot is very different from the original, which personally does not bother me: even with a simple dramatization of the novel, one has to sharply rearrange the accents, reduce the number of characters, etc., but here it is a musical, a conventional genre. But within the changed plot, everything must be logical and consistent, actions and their reasons must be somehow spelled out, we must understand what relationships connect the characters - and all this must be expressed through musical means (as in the same "Notre Dame de Paris ", where the plot is transparent, like a tear, and there are no holes in it, and all the characters who know each other COMMUNICATE through duets)... Meanwhile, here the connections between the characters and the motivations for their actions are very poorly described. A few examples:
-Dracula offers Renfield (here he is in love with Lucy) a barter: Lucy in exchange for Mina. As part of the deal, Dracula somehow seduces Lucy and turns her into a vampire.
- The connection between Mina and Lucy is not specified at all, we only know that the heroes - whether together or separately is unclear - come to Wallachia to investigate the numerous deaths of local residents (obviously from the fangs of Timur Dracula and his team). By the way - why? Is it really over the past centuries that this question first became of interest to Europeans? Lucy and Mina, Lucy and Harker do not interact at all, but after the death of Lucy, Mina and Harker, suddenly inflamed with warm feelings for the deceased, accompany her on her last journey in the company of two silent Asian-looking mourners (typical Transylvanians - they are like that).
- Renfield takes Mina to Dracula with a simple statement: “Come, Mina, I will show you a magical land.” Would you follow such a proposal after a clearly inadequate-looking person? Well, of course, yes, why hesitate - Mina went without any doubts.

Renfield's sad end, by the way, amused instead of impressing. For an incomprehensible purpose, all the vampires literally chased the poor fellow and injected him with drugs everywhere until he died (in order to give this action at least some justification, the good-natured Dracula explained that leaving the unfortunate man to live without love is still inhumane). Then the vampires became sad and sang that the world is not what it seems, and this, in turn, served as the introduction to Dracula’s lyrical aria.

Again, by the way: it is unclear why the heroes are so swooning over Mina - except for the fact that Dracula recognized his wife in her - the one in the SS cap - and Jonathan is simply in love, because a love aria was written for him. In the novel she was called an “amazing woman” and all the characters rushed around with her precisely because of her actions demonstrating nobility and courage. Here Mina is an absolutely uninteresting and driven creature; This “altermondialist activist” periodically declares that she is going to “change the world,” but that’s about it. She does not commit a single real or worthy act, she just talks. In between arias about changing the world, she talks to Jonathan, and once in Dracula’s castle, she suspiciously quickly forgets about Jonathan and after a couple of arias she tries to lie down with the count on the bed of love. Of course, the fact that she recognized him as her ex-husband (five hundred years ago) and vampire hypnosis can also be brought into play here, but a decent musical heroine, in my opinion, is supposed to bounce more and better between one fateful love and another fateful love. And the general passivity of the heroine is depressing. In the finale, both lovers practically pull her in different directions, like a rag doll.

And, since we're talking about the finale, the musical ends with Dracula admitting his mistakes and his moral victory. Yes exactly. Moreover: the reunited Mina and Harker, the nominal winners, are not supposed to have any final aria; there is no need to waste extra stage time on them - instead, Dracula will perform the enchantingly spectacular aria “Reign” and proudly dies. Myself. But my God, who is interested in the positive heroes of a musical when Bruno Pelletier is on stage! There are no words, he is artistic and dramatically convincing, he has a wonderful velvety timbre, the most winning musical pieces are given to him, but what happens after the death of the antagonist, in principle, does not interest the creators - after the triumphant death of Dracula, bows immediately follow. And in general, the positive characters here serve as the background against which Bruno shines and impresses the viewer.

It seems like I was poisoned, but I’m just offended. It's a shame for the artists who worked conscientiously with wonderful voices. For a composer who may not be a genius, but is far from mediocre. God bless him, with the libretto - even such a naive one, with a hastily put together plot and primitive discussions about Stalin and Che Guevara, would have been saved by music, it contains successful finds, like the same posthumous aria of Lucy, but - the work of an artist!! ! In a genre that involves not only memorable expressive music, but also entertainment! Yes, on stage, especially in a musical, convention is acceptable, but look at the conventional costumes in Notre Dame, which suit the actors, fit them like a second skin, elegant in their own way - and compare with what you see here. But you can come up with a lot of variations on the theme of the Slavic costume, in different price categories, if only you had imagination and desire! But instead, before us is a heavily powdered man in shoe leather and a lady in a BDSM mistress costume.

In general, I repeat, one gets the impression that in Pelletier’s homeland they wanted to stage their “Notre Dame” like the big ones - but we know how long and difficult it sometimes is to raise funds for such projects, and, probably, it’s not the fault of the creators that visually the musical it turned out so poor and tasteless.

P.S. A charming (I'm not kidding!) detail: since the director of all this is Ukrainian, the Transylvanian characters periodically turn in phrases in Russian (with the cutest French accent) and sing "Tsve teren". They must believe it's Romanian.

P.P.S. If you watch a musical, notice how much better it is when performed in concert. Clip for one of the most beautiful arias: