The show starts in a few minutes and everyone gets ready. Tonight is not quite an evening like the others: tonight, Notre-Dame de Paris plays in New York! A few blocks from the mythical Broadway… There is electricity in the air. The dancers stretch. The singers warm up their voices. We drink lemon juice with ginger, it’s good for the vocal cords. Jérémy Amelin, finalist of Star Academy 5, is about to put on the costume of Phoebus, made famous by Patrick Fiori. Elhaina Dani, who walks in the footsteps of Hélène Segara in Esmeralda, and Garou’s successor, Angelo Del Vecchio (whom we could see in The Voice in 2018 in Florent Pagny’s team), are in make-up. The latter takes about an hour to turn into Quasimodo… He’s used to it: recruited for the Italian version in 2011, he has since worked for the French and English libretto. He himself could not say how many times he held the role. Probably more than a thousand… Daniel Lavoie, the only one of the troupe to have been able to grow old with his character as archdeacon Claude Frollo, concentrates. At 74, as he tells us, he doesn’t want to hear about retirement… He assures us that, like good wine, his interpretation has improved over time. And that he has neither the project nor the desire to leave this happy band. For 25 years, many have marched on stage to defend the characters imagined in 1831 by Victor Hugo and reinvented in 1998 by Luc Plamandon and Richard Cocciante. But behind the scenes, the team stayed. Immutable like cathedral stones.
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Nearly 5,000 performances in more than 20 countries
In the corridors, we come across the co-creators, Plamandon and Cocciante, who are always present. Of course, they don’t attend all the performances! But the interpreter of Il mio refugio assures us: we must vouch for the quality of the show as it was conceived. “Over the years, the work could deteriorate… Everyone has their own interpretation… We are here to ensure that there is no drift”. Thus the staging imagined by Gilles Maheu has not aged a bit. No more than the choreographies thought up at the end of the last century by Martino Müller. All of this is disconcertingly modern and topical! “This is what makes the universality of Notre-Dame”, still rejoices Maestro Cocciante. “In 1998, we were precursors. This kind of show did not exist in France. And musically, it was not fashionable either. We made a daring bet”. Daniel Lavoie confirms: “With the team, (Garou, Bruno Pelletier, we all thought that it could be a total flop. We went there for the joy of working together but no one would have ever imagined such a success!” And yet… Nearly 5,000 performances in more than 20 countries, a booklet translated into 8 languages and more than a thousand artists and technicians embarked on this adventure for 25 years to satisfy more than 15 million spectators… This evening again, the The New York public will be conquered and will rise to acclaim those who, for twenty-five years, have made the stones of Notre-Dame travel: Eternal and universal history.
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Notre Dame de Parisuntil July 16 at the David H. Kock Theater at Lincoln Center, New York.
From August 2 to 10 at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier in Montreal, Quebec.
From November 15, in Paris, at the Palais des Congrès, where it was created 25 years ago.
2023-06-28 17:00:00
#NotreDame #Paris #sets #fire #York #City
