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Errata For some reason I keep calling Andrew Lloyd-Webber Andrew Lloyd-Wright, which is weird because I know nothing about architecture.  Anyway, the author of Phantom of the Author is Andrew Lloyd-Webber, not Andrew Lloyd-Wright.  Together, however, I feel they would make a spectacular opera house.

Intro: On Oct 13, 2016 the Phantom of the Opera is scheduled to open in the Mogador Theater.  The narrative is, of course, set in the majestic, surreal, very gothic Palais Garnier, and the opera house is also key to the plot.

The show has been running in London for 20 years, never been performed in Paris.  It's getting a little prickly; the musical is based on a book by French writer Gaston LaRoux and there’s some kerfuffle afoot.  Andrew Lloyd Webber isn’t exactly forthcoming crediting the LaRoux estate.  Since LaRous was French, that complicates matters.  But it has all been worked out…to the satisfaction of the estate, the lawyers, the production company, and the theater.  But not, perhaps, to the satisfaction of the Phantom.  A disaster would strike, and the production would never open.  To this day, this classic French story, in an iconic French location, that is the archetypical example of French Gothic storytelling, has not been performed in France.

This episode will explore the musical production, starting with the Lloyd-Webber version of events leading up to it, looking into the various charges and counter-chargers, and trying to find out if the musical succeeds because of the book, if the book only survives because of the musical, or if there's some other formula out there.

And finally, what happened that prevented the musical from being performed in France?

(References in Episode 4)

NYT: On the credits issue: https://www.nytimes.com/1988/05/11/theater/old-novel-returns-to-haunt-a-current-musical.html?auth=login-google1tap&login=google1tap

 What the fire looked like:

https://www.tumblr.com/operafantomet/184591545852/do-you-what-ever-happend-after-the-fire-in-the

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It’s the fall of 1923, and Lon Chaney Sr. has just starred in a smash hit based on Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame.  There is going to be a follow-up show, and it is going to be a hit.  But who’s idea was it?  And why will that matter to the critical reception of a musical that won’t come out for another 80 years?

Flash forward two years, and now It’s the summer of 1925.  Universal Pictures has invested a pile of money in a new movie, but there’s a war council that’s been called because the production is going so poorly that it’s on the edge of collapse, and had so much been invested in the show it might simply have been dropped.

I’m sure you’ve guessed the title by now.  But if this movie isn’t made, the Phantom story will languish, and it’s very likely the Andrew Lloyd-Webber musical mega-hit will never come to be.

What happened?  Why was the show in such dire straights, and what was done to save it?

How many endings were considered, scripted, and shot?  And after the brush with disaster, what finally made the movie work?

And….where ARE THE GHOSTS?  If one Hollywood production should have some really juicy ghost stories surrounding the set and the performers, it’s this one.  If there’s a good ghost story out there, by god, I’m going to find it.

We’ll try to find them in this episode, part 2 of a 3-part series on the Phantom.  Season 1, ep 4 we looked at the book.  Today the movie, and next time the musical.  But the themes here will make a difference to understanding what may be the most profitable musical of all time.

(References in Episode 4)

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This is EPISODE 4.  The next episode, EPISODE 5, will drop on December 16.

It’s 1786, and a male ballet dancer (“Dahn- sir”) and ballerina both dance at the Paris opera house, and the man falls in love with the woman.  But so does a solider, and in the love triangle the dahn-sir is killed.  With his dying breath he asks that he be buried in the opera house to be near his love in death if not in life, and his bones are later used as props in theater productions.

Could this story be the inspiration for the Phantom of the Opera?

Or in 1873 the original opera house burned down just as the majestic new Palais Garnier is being finished, leaving a ballerina dead and her fiancé disfigured.  

Could this story be the inspiration for the Phantom of the Opera?

Ironically, the Phantom of the Opera isn’t a phantom at all – it’s a real guy and not a ghost.  So it might not be that surprising that number of non-ghostly mysteries surround the Phantom of the Opera.  SO MANY QUESTIONS.

• What, and who, inspired the characters?
• Was there a real chandelier accident, and if so, what happened?
• The story has obviously gained traction, but when the book was published, was it a flop or a hit?  
• How did Carl Lemmele, the CEO of Universal Pictures, find out about the book?
• What makes the narrative so enduring, that it’s inspired a book, a movie, and musical?
• What makes the musical so popular – maybe even more popular than any entertainment production, including any movie – and is it the same thing that makes the book work?  Does the narrative of the book make the musical work, or did the musical resuscitate a poorly written book?
• Was Andrew Lloyd Webber a fan of the book or did he consider it a classic penny dreadful?
• How does the story end?
• As interpretations fly, an intrepid “independent scholar” finds a previously undiscovered ORIGINAL manuscript that shows what the author was thinking at the time the book was printed.  What did that manuscript reveal?
• And where are the ghosts?

In this episode we'll discuss the author, the original books, and separate out what real and imagined incidents inspired the original book.

REFERENCES

Babilas, D. (2013).  Paris Opera as an Edifice and a Literary Haunted House.  In Dark Cartogrophies – Exploring Gothic Spaces (pp. 67-87).  Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press.

Biancorosso, G. (2018). The phantom of the opera and the performance of cinema. The Opera Quarterly, 34(2), 153–167. https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/8/article/716827

Blake, M. F. (1995).  A thousand faces: Lon Chaney’s unique artistry in motion pictures.  New York: Vestal Press.

Chandler, D. (2009). “What do we mean by opera, anyway? ”: Lloyd webber’s phantom of the opera and “high-pop” theatre. Journal of Popular Music Studies, 21(2), 152–169. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1533-1598.2009.01186.x

Cui, A.-X., Motamed Yeganeh, N., Sviatchenko, O., Leavitt, T., McKee, T., Guthier, C., Hermiston, N., & Boyd, L. (2022). The phantoms of the opera—Stress offstage and stress onstage. Psychology of Music, 50(3), 797–813. https://doi.org/10.1177/03057356211013504

Curiosity Damsel. (2017, July 24). The opera ghost really existed.. Curiosity Damsel. https://curiositydamsel.wordpress.com/2017/07/24/the-opera-ghost-really-existed/

Frey, A. (2016, July 22). The

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In the early 1970s and a writer for plays, movies, and television is holed up in Palm Springs at one of the most unusual restaurants in operation.  There was a sole proprietor, the menu has one dish, and there is no advertising or tourists because there are only 4 tables.  The topic of conversation is whether to turn a stage play into a musical, and the server, cook, owner, and sole employee is also a psychic.  

The cook is consulted about the project and predicts: “It will be extremely successful,” she says, “In fact, it will overwhelm your life.”

Two years later, in 1972 the production would open as a musical.

The playwright was Dale Wasserman, the project was converting The Man From La Mancha into a musical, and it would go on to play over 2,000 shows

There was something mystical afoot: “Facts cannot explain the success of the Man from La Mancha.  Something more was at work…”

Part 1 looked at the significance of the book Don Quixote.  Part 2 looked at the life of Miguel de Cervantes.  This episode, part 3, looks at how the book was converted into a musical that went on to be one of the most successful musical  theater productions ever.  And the crazy coincidences that were necessary to bring it about...

(References listed in episode 1)

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This is the story of how one of the greatest books ever written, Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, became one of the most successful musicals in broadway history, which of course was The Man from La Mancha by Dale Wasserman.

The year is 1579, and a solider being held in an Algerian prison, and he’s about to make his 4th, and failed, attempt to escape.  And this is only one of a multitude of life mishaps that makes it very unlikely the solider even survived.  And it wasn’t until the age of 58 that the solider, then prisoner, then tax collector, would write the world’s first novel.

 What utterly impossible set of circumstances had to happen for this prisoner to even get out of prison, much less become one of the greatest writers of all time?

 Flash forward 350 years to the mid-1960s where a playwright is looking to convert a stage play into a musical, he has an acquaintance who is a psychic, so the writer asks whether the musical will be a successful endeavor.  The psychic predicts not only that it will, and will soon overwhelm the writer’s life.

Both predictions are entirely accurate.

This is a 3 part dive into Don Quixote.  In part 1 we looked at the impact of the book and what made it so important.  Take home points are that it is  a really big deal, and it had a lot of important ideas wrapped around a really funny and accessible story.

In this part we’ll look at the star-crossed life of Cervantes, including the ominous predictions surrounding 1588, his deeply ironic relationship with the greatest playwright of his day, and try to answer the question of how someone with his life could possibly write comedy.

In part 3 we’ll ask how that narrative, 350 years later, get translated into one of the most successful musicals in broadway history?

What series of impossible and unlikely events had to happen for the world to inherit Don Quixote?

(References in Episode 1)

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Thank you to the fan from Los Angeles who writes: "Hi. I've been enjoying your Cervantes podcast but unless the show on Broadway that was made from the book by Cervantes turned it into a spy story, the proper title of the musical is "Man of La Mancha." Not the man and not from."  All true, I can only identify this as errata.

This is the story of how one of the greatest books ever written, Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, became one of the most successful musicals in broadway history, which of course was The Man from La Mancha by Dale Wasserman.

The year is 1579, and a solider being held in an Algerian prison is about to make his 4th escape attempt.  It will fail, and there’s a very real chance that although he’s escaped severe punishment the first 3 times, this failure could be fatal.  (McKendrick 82)  His foiled attempt will not result in being put to death, but will leave him utterly without hope of escape. 

What utterly impossible set of circumstances had to happen for this prisoner to even get out of prison, much less become one of the greatest writers of all time?

The year is 1615, and a very conventional playwright is writing the second part of a very unconventional book.  Really wanted to be a playwright, seemed almost ambivalent about being an author of books.  In it he pens the phrase “My guess is that there is not a nation or language into which the book will not be translated.”  This prediction will prove to be entirely true.

What about this book is so compelling that it makes its own equivocal author an accurate prophet, beyond his own wildest dreams?

The time frame is now the mid-1960s a playwright is looking to convert a stage play into a musical, and he’s having a meal at small restaurant where the cook is also the sole proprietor and the menu has one item.  The cook is also a psychic, so the writer asks whether the musical will be a successful endeavor.  The psychic predicts not only that it will, and will soon overwhelm the writer’s life.

Both predictions are entirely accurate.

Not only are these 3 events connected, but they are connected by a straight line and by the exact same narrative.

In this 3-episode series I pursue the history Don Quixote, and episode 1.1 starts with the book -- how did it get written, what's it about, and why has it become such a class?  Episode 2 will explore the life of the author, MIguel de Cervantes, and episode 3 will get to how the author and the story got woven into a musical.

REFERENCES

Albrecht, J. W. (2005). Theater and politics in four film versions of the Quijote. Hispania, 88(1), 4-10. https://doi.org/10.2307/20063070

Bayliss, R. (2006). What Don Quixote means (today). Comparative Literature Studies, 43(4), 382-397. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25659541

Gregor, K. (2016). Collaborative encounters? Two recent Spanish takes on the Shakespeare–Cervantes relationship. Palgrave Communications, 2(1), 16033. https://doi.org/10.1057/palcomms.2016.33

Johnson, M. (2007, April 23). Why Don Quixote needs show tunes. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/stage/theatreblog/2007/apr/23/whydonquixoteneedsshowtun

McKendrick, M. (1980).  Cervantes.  Boston: Little, Brown and Company.

Miller, S. (2024). Inside man of La Mancha. In New Line Theatre. https://www.newlinetheatre.com/lamanchachapter.html

Mineo, L. (2016, April 25). A true giant. Harvard Gazette. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2016/04/a-true

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Seance transcript images:

Pages 1187 and 1189 of the seance transcripts contain the words "fille" and "morte," but neither includes the words Leopoldine.  Page 1189 of the seance transcripts.  Page 1187 of the seance transcripts.

Show summary:

It is September 11, 1853, and the already famous author Victor Hugo has been mourning the loss of his daughter for 2 years.  He’s also been exiled from France, and having barely escaped with his life he’s now living on a small island off the French coast named Jersey.  He’s there with his wife, his mistress, his children, and some friends.  He’s sitting on 2/3rds of a manuscript for Les Misérables, and his plans for it’s future and its publication are in limbo, as is the rest of his life.

Days earlier they have received as a guest the distinguished Mademoiselle de Girardin, herself an accomplished author, member of high society, and well-connected member of the continent’s literary class.  She has brought with her a device that is all the rage in the Europe that Hugo can’t visit…a séance table.  It’s not sophisticated, and it’s really just a small table on top of a large table that’s supposed to tap when the spirits arrive.  In a few tries so far it hasn’t really done anything.

But the group has gathered again, with a designated transcriber ready to take the minutes of the event to save an accurate transcript for the historical record.

Tonight IS different.  When called upon, the spirits will move the table.  In fact, they will tap out a message so precise and so clear that nobody could doubt it’s authenticity…and nobody did.  Skeptics were turned into believers instantly.  What did the table say?  Why did it resonate so strongly with the Hugo family?

This table would send Victor Hugo a very specific message about the  Les Misérables manuscript … and introduce the family to William Shakespeare as well.  What did the table say about Les Mis, and how would that affect the eventual production of the novel?  We’ll talk to the ghosts on this episode of THM.

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Thanks almost entirely to his mistress, Victor Hugo escaped France with his life and an early manuscript of Les Miserables.  While living in exile and on an island close to the coast but under British control, he finishes the book 10 years later.  It’s an immediate international smash hit, with an appeal so broad that even soldiers on BOTH sides of the US civil war love it.  

From there it’s a roller coaster…hugely popular between 1860 and 1900 it falls out of favor as France turns conservative between 1900 and 1940.  Its popularity re-energizes starting with the second world war, and then by 1980 it becomes one of the first big musicals in France, then takes over the London stage, and finally explodes on Broadway to become what many would call the most successful musical of all time.

So what has made this story so powerful?  Is it the love story, the redemption of the main character, or the call to a revolution?  Is it the intricate plot or the famous digressions, on topics from raw sewage to criminal slang, that run on for hundreds of pages?  We’ll consider all of these possibilities in this episode of THM.

Report on Homelessness in Orange County; interviews with unhoused people

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This episode covers 5 real historical figures that helped inspire the novel, and a whirlwind plot summary of the original Victor Hugo novel.

Errata:  For some reason I kept referring to the character Marius as "Marcus" -- please just skip that.  

Here's a link to the image of the Bishop's plaque, identifying that character in the novel is based on the actual Bishop of Deign.

Introduction

Against the odds, an early draft of Les Miserables made it out of Paris, with it’s author – Victor Hugo – in hiding for 9 days and with a price on his head.  The hero who saved the book is his mistress, who was also his copyist.  She smuggled a trunk with the manuscript to Brussels and then the island of Jersey, where she maintained a residence a stone’s throw from where Hugo was living with his wife and family.

When the book is finally published almost a decade later, Les Miserables instantly becomes the most commercially successful novel to that point in history.  Embedded within it are at least 3 different numerological references, what gamers today would call easter eggs.  These numbers are so obscure even the most crazed Les Mis fans would miss their significance.  What were they, and what did they mean?

And Les Mis is a work of fiction, but it very much is a commentary on its time. That time is one where who’s in charge of France shifts dramatically, and violently, about every 10 years.  Hugo writes the book in exile and has to recall the city of Paris from memory.  As he’s doing that, were his characters based on actual historical figures?  Was there an actual Cosette, or Fantine, or even Jean Valjean?

And, as always, what was this book about what was it’s message that has resonated with the audience?

We’ll figure this out and walk through the plot of this 1,500 page masterpiece, which takes as many twists, turns, and side trips as a barricaded French alley.  Let’s do it!  In this episode of Theater History and Mysteries.

Footnotes available in Episode 7 

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It's ​1860, ​and ​Victor ​Hugo, ​having ​taken ​to ​the ​barricades ​against ​the ​hated ​Louis ​Napoleon, ​has ​escaped ​Paris ​with ​a ​price ​on ​his ​head. ​And ​his ​mistress, ​not ​his ​wife, ​has ​successfully ​smuggled ​both ​he ​and ​his ​unfinished ​manuscripts ​out ​of ​France. ​But ​now ​he's ​in ​exile, ​living ​in ​an ​island ​off ​the ​French ​coast ​but ​under ​British ​control. ​How ​is ​he ​going ​to ​get ​his ​masterwork ​published? ​And ​as ​the ​text ​comes ​to ​be ​finished, ​it ​will ​be ​rightly ​remembered ​as ​a ​definitive ​statement ​on ​the ​French ​Revolution. ​But ​where ​in ​the ​book ​is ​the ​Revolution? ​The ​text ​is ​​1,500 ​pages ​long, ​and ​one ​of ​the ​five ​volumes ​is ​entirely ​dedicated ​to ​a ​revolt ​that ​happened ​over ​two ​days ​in ​1832. ​But ​in ​that ​skirmish, ​the ​revolutionaries ​lost, ​and ​all ​historians ​agree ​that ​the ​fight ​had ​almost ​no ​military ​or ​political ​significance. ​In ​fact, ​the ​most ​significant ​outcome ​of ​the ​battle ​is ​the ​painting ​Liberty ​Leading ​the ​People ​by ​Eugene ​Delacroix ​was ​banned ​from ​being ​shown ​in ​public ​because ​it ​might ​inspire ​people ​to ​revolt. ​H ​m, ​that's ​interesting. ​A ​piece ​of ​art ​is ​taken ​down ​from ​display ​to ​its ​possible ​political ​consequences. ​But ​back ​to ​our ​question. ​Surely ​that ​skirmish ​is ​not ​what ​Hugo's ​central ​theme ​is. ​Where ​is ​the ​revolution? ​In ​the ​most ​famous ​novel ​about ​the ​French ​Revolution?  We ​will ​go ​down ​those ​winding, ​narrow ​Parisian ​back ​alleys ​trying ​to ​find ​it ​in ​this ​episode ​of ​Theater ​History ​and ​Mysteries. 

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It’s 1848 and there is yet another violent transfer of power going on in France.  One of its greatest citizens – both a member of the legislative body and the Legion of Honor, has been in hiding for 9 days with a price on his head.  If he’s found by the wrong people he will surely be killed.  He is an author and he does have a pile of manuscripts he’s working on, but first he’s got to get out of France.  How did he do it?  Was he the hero who saved the manuscript that would become the most famous French novel, or was it someone else?  How was the manuscript saved?

The story did get out and did get published and is considered the quintessential story of the French revolution.  But the central event on the barricades isn’t about the big French revolution in 1789 or even later events in the mid-1800s where Hugo himself was ON the barricades.  In fact, the 2 days on the barricades that consume almost a fifth of the whole book had almost no military significance at all.  Why did Hugo center on this event for inspiration instead of the much more significant revolution of the 1790s or the much more consequential events that Hugo himself was a part of?  Where is the revolution in this, the most famous fictional account of the French revolution?

REFERENCES in transcript.

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A young TS Eliot is at Harvard where the field of psychology is just now emerging.  You can read Freud, of course, but there’s nothing like behavioral or analytic psychology that have yet to be developed.  But there are dreams – and what, exactly, are those?  Freud himself starts his book by citing what the Greeks thought that they were, which in many cases were visions of alternate realties, a channeling of the gods, a means of clairvoyance where the future, or at least possible futures, were revealed.

What was science supposed to do with all of that?

Well one answer, and one that TS Eliot studied, was that there was a place between heaven and earth, between the purely spiritual and the definitely physical.  Eliot begins to wonder, as did Hamlet and then Victor Frankenstein, whether there was more in heaven and earth than was dreamt of in philosophy – or science.

And so the youthful Eliot, seeking a truth that the world itself was only beginning to come to grips with, would not only experiment with the occult but put it rather directly in the forefront of his literary work, including and especially his defining poem, The Wasteland.

After his fame arrived, he would take up a side project, writing a light book of children’s rhymes.  About cats.  One of those poems he never finished.  That poem talked about the dreamspace, maybe that third space between heaven and earth.  But that poem went nowhere.  It was probably too serious for a children’s book.  He just stuck the poem in the back of his stack of paper – the heavyside layer would not come out in his book about cats, but it would get resurrected after his death to form the central frame for the musical.

How deeply was TS Eliot involved with the occult?  Why did he put that theme in such a central place in his best poem?  How come he kept describing writing poetry like an instance of demon possession?  Grab your rosary beads, let’s all stay safe in this episode of THM. 

Poll about belief in God and the devil

https://assets.realclear.com/files/2024/01/2334_RCORToplineJan92024.pdf

Cursed books

https://bookbindersmuseum.org/you-have-been-warned-book-curses-and-cursed-books/

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Episode #4

The year is 1982.  The liberatory vibe of the 1960s is long gone…Ronald Reagan is president, and it’s a bad time to be an air traffic controller, or a union member, or an Iranian hostage, or, maybe most tragically, if you’re gay.  But there remain progressive voices, and one of those is the Village Voice, still an open champion of the avante garde in the world.  If you have a new, edgy, and experimental piece of theater, the Village Voice should be your core audience.

But Michael Feingold, the theater critic for the Voice, does not like the genre-busting production he just watched, and he’s dripping acid off his pen to try to come up with something more demeaning than his previous paragraph, and by and large it’s working.  Jessica Sternfeld recounts his prose: “Feingold tidily listed each disastrous element and how it contributed to a show clearly doomed to failure…the poetry itself, Feingold began, struggled painfully and unsuccessfully…the music is such inane, characterless drivel that only a generation of stoned clones and TV drones could have summed it up…the music doesn’t sound composed.  It doodles randomly from chord to chord, never developing a theme or structure…Feingold did not further elaborate his problems with the music, but moved to the third horror, [the] choreography, which looked borrowed and represented all too directly the choreographer’s undistinguished career.”

“Cats,” wrote Feingold, “is a dog.”  And with a special crescendo: “To sit through it is to realize that something has been peeing on your pants leg.  For two hours.”  And for the finale: “It ought to be retitled 101 uses for a dead musical, a reference to the popular book 101 uses for a dead cat.”  

As we know, that view of Feingold would not be widely shared, and the musical would resonate with all those marginalized groups that the Village Voice would otherwise represent.  In fact, it would become the longest-running, most lucrative, and probably most popular musical of all time.  We’ll figure out what Feingold missed, with urine-busting scotch guard on our pants, in this episode of THM.

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Cats, 3rd episode

A show is about to open in two days.  It features a power-packed pair of producers who would re-write Broadway history with two of the biggest musicals of all time, POA and Les Mis.  The female lead is in one of the final rehearsals, and it will be her place in history to sing into the world a song so powerful, so vital, so memorable, that it will immediately become a top-10 hit, get re-recorded more than 600 times, including two MORE trips to the top 10 by two others who are mega-stars in their own right.

I can’t fool you.  You are listening to a musical theater podcast.  You know the performer, and you know the song.  Elaine Paige is performing to an empty house, but she’s doing one of the final run-throughs of Memory, performing in Grisabella before the opening of Cats, and the mega-stars are Barbera Streisand and Barry Mantilow.

The other performers watch from the wings – it’s almost the only moment of the show where they aren’t all dancing during the musical numbers.  The orchestra rises in anticipation; this is the song that will make the show.  In fact, it’s the song that almost all the critics will point to as holding the entire show together, and show that will go on to play tends of thousands of times, win every major award, break all records for longest run and largest return.

It's a formula that’s worked before; Andrew Lloyd Webber, the composer, has paired with lyricist Tim Rice, and the magic that is conjured with the fusion of those two genius minds never fails to move audiences.

And then, breathlessly at first, she trills words that will soon be immoral: “Daylight / I won’t care if it finds me / With no breath in my body / With no beat in my heart.”

Wait.  What?  No, those aren’t the words.  I really can’t fool you!

But they were almost the words…that’s right, the lyrics to maybe the most immortal song in Broadway history were changed 2 days before the show opened.  And that was after the female lead had to pull from the show because she snapped her Achilles tendon, before the producers declared what the director had been done was not fit for the stage and threatened to pull the whole thing, before all the costumes were scrapped and re-done one week out.

And these are just some of things that almost derailed the show before it ever started.  But, as we know, these obstacles were overcome.  What had to happen for the show to get off the ground, and, most importantly, why did it work?  In the words of director Trevor Nunn, “the theater creaked, the ghosts walked…” and we’ll find out where they went in this episode of THM.

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TS Eliot is the author of Old Possum’s Guide to Practical Cats.  That’s a book of poems that will get transformed into one of the greatest broadway musicals of all time.  In fact, it might be the Broadway musical – it so shaped what a Broadway musical is that it’s changed the way the world thinks about musicals at all.

But that wasn’t the poetry that put TS Eliot on the map.  In fact, TS Eliot himself would have smash hits on Broadway during his lifetime…but none of them had anything to do with the poems or cats or anything other than his own, distant observations of his own failed marriage and his strange connection to very conservative religious beliefs.

And in the middle of all that, somehow, improbably, this guy has to write a children’s book about Cats.  

How did that happen?  What made TS Eliot tick, why did that result in a frightening move to the ugly right, and why was all that necessary for him to write Old Possum’s Practical Cats?  We’ll curl up on a couch and find a nice, comfortable beam of sunlight as we share this saga in this episode of THM.

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TS Eliot had demons.  He wrote about his demons.  He said that writing poems were like demons escaping from his body, and that when he finished writing them he would experience a “moment of exhaustion, of appeasement, of absolution, and of something very near annihilation, which is in itself indescribable.”

He wrote a poem that would become the archetypical anthem of a newly-emerging modernist movement in literature – it was dark, and brooding and anxious, and grim, and disturbing and unsettling.  That poem would be called, cheerily enough, the wasteland.

And in the middle of all that, he would write a delightful children’s book about cats, that would be picked up by Andrew Lloyd Webber and transformed into one of the biggest Broadway smash hits of all time.

What’s up with TS Eliot?  What shaped this guy and made him tick.  What were his demons…and how does Cats fit into all of that?  

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 A young music producer has just seen a production of Jesus Christ, Superstar and was hit by his muse … he wandered the streets of Manhattan, unable to sleep.  A native of France, Alain Boublil felt he had to keep walking until he found a theme that could match the power and emotional intensity of what he’d just seen, and something uniquely French.  He came to the defining national moment…the French Revolution.  That idea would develop into a rock opera, then a concept album, and finally transform into what has been rightly called the most successful musical of all time, in a show that has been seen by 70 million people in 44 countries and translated into 22 languages.  It has been a hit everywhere it has been except…France.  Why?

That second turn would see Boublil trade the muse for a mentor…the original production was about the French revolution but it was not about it was not based on Victor Hugo’s famous book.  That would take inspiration from Hugo’s cross-channel counterpart, Charles Dickens.  Boublil walked into a production of the quintessentially English show Oliver and walked out inspired to base the production on Les Miserables.  Incredibly enough, that show will be produced by the same man who was running the production of Oliver.

Which is only one of two incredible connections between England and France…the production of Victor Hugo’s masterpiece will, in the end, depend NOT on France’s greatest novelist but England’s greatest author.  How does the production of Les Miserables depend as much on William Shakespear and Victor Hugo?  We will trace all these fascinating paths of lineage on this episode of THM.

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Errata: At about the 12 minute mark I say that Phantom of the Opera is a Victor Hugo story.  It isn't -- it's French, but the author is Gaston LaRoux.

A young music producer has just seen a production of Jesus Christ, Superstar and was hit by his muse … he wandered the streets of Manhattan, unable to sleep.  A native of France, Alain Boublil felt he had to keep walking until he found a theme that could match the power and emotional intensity of what he’d just seen, and something uniquely French.  He came to the defining national moment…the French Revolution.  That idea would develop into a rock opera, then a concept album, and finally transform into what has been rightly called the most successful musical of all time, in a show that has been seen by 70 million people in 44 countries and translated into 22 languages.  It has been a hit everywhere it has been except…France.  Why?

That second turn would see Boublil trade the muse for a mentor…the original production was about the French revolution but it was not about it was not based on Victor Hugo’s famous book.  That would take inspiration from Hugo’s cross-channel counterpart, Charles Dickens.  Boublil walked into a production of the quintessentially English show Oliver and walked out inspired to base the production on Les Miserables.  Incredibly enough, that show will be produced by the same man who was running the production of Oliver.

Which is only one of two incredible connections between England and France…the production of Victor Hugo’s masterpiece will, in the end, depend NOT on France’s greatest novelist but England’s greatest author.  How does the production of Les Miserables depend as much on William Shakespear and Victor Hugo?  We will trace all these fascinating paths of lineage on this episode of THM. 

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Starting in September 1853 Victor Hugo, exiled to an island off the coast of France because the now-Emperor Louis Napoleon has told the army to shoot Hugo on sight, has been holding a series of seances.  There are been hundreds of them.  They have all been transcribes.  Scores of people have participated.  Many have served as amateur mediums.

 he results have been spectacular; they’ve made contact with their tragically deceased daughter, and other ghosts on the island, and some of history’s most important figures, from Plato to Jesus to Shakespeare.

And then, in October of 1855, the seances abruptly stop.  Why?  Who ended them?  The spirits told Victor Hugo to pick up his unfinished manuscript and get it published…was that the reason the novel came into being?  Does the end of the seances say something about whether the seances were real.  WERE the seances real?  Did spirits from beyond the grave come to speak to Victor Hugo?  We might not catch ‘em, but we will chase those ghosts as far as we can in this episode of THM.

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