ABSTRACT
Wanting an inherently "French" topic, Claude-Michel Schonberg and Alain Boublil decided to create a musical out of the most significant event in their nation's history. By 1973, they were ready to record La revolution francaise, following the concept-album method used by Lloyd Webber in several early musicals. Victor Hugo, one of France's greatest authors, had died in 1885, leaving orders that his poetry should never be set to music. Hugo published the epic Les Miserables in 1862, and its reception foreshadowed the treatment the musical would receive more than a century later: critics hated it, while the public devoured it. At the opening night party after the Palace Theatre premiere of Les Miserables, Schonberg and Boublil took a great deal of gleeful pleasure in telling Cameron Mackintosh that since it looked as if they might have a future as professional writers, they were glad they had started work on a new show.
