Alain Boublil, who, with composer Claude-Michel Schönberg, penned the score for Les Miz, told the New York Post, "I think of Edith Piaf. . . Piaf was a small woman who looked like nothing. And then she opened her mouth, and this beautiful sound came out."
Boublil added, "You expect nothing and then [Boyle] opens her mouth and you get three or four of the most exciting moments I have ever seen on television. Act I: She arrives and everyone is laughing at her. Act II: She bowls them over. Act III: Everyone is out of their seats. . . .You cannot plan any of that. My wife was crying when she saw it. Even the most cynical people I know have been moved."
Boublil also explained the genesis of the Act One show-stopper to the New York daily: "I remember I was in a car driving in the north of France and was working on this song about Fantine. Her descent into hell — she loses everything: her money, her daughter — takes up several chapters. I had to encapsulate 50 pages of the novel into a three-minute song. So I decided rather than to list all the happiness, I would go inside her head — 'I Dreamt of a Different Life' was the original title. And that is how the lyric was born." Herbert Kretzmer helped shape the lyric to the version audiences now know.
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| Susan Boyle | ||
