JEAN VALJEAN
Jean Valjean is the protagonist of Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel Les Misérables. Hugo depicts the character’s 19-year-long struggle to lead a normal life after serving a prison sentence for stealing bread to feed his sister’s children during a time of economic depression and various attempts to escape from prison. Valjean and Police Inspector Javert, who repeatedly encounters Valjean and attempts to return him to prison, have become archetypes in literary culture. (More from Wikipedia)
The next Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, Evita – my personal favorite among the Webber shows – started out as a rock opera album that was released in 1975. In a novel move, the narrator of the story of Eva “Evita” Perón, the wife of Argentine dictator Juan Perón, is famed South American and Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara (identified only as “Che” initially). Mandy Patinkin launched his career with his Tony-winning role as Che on Broadway; on the original Evita album and in earlier productions, Che is played by Colm Wilkinson, who later became world famous in originating the role of Jean Valjean in the 1985 West End (London) and Broadway musical Les Misèrables.
(September 2016)
