Overview
Introduction
Notre-Dame de Paris is a sung-through French and Québécois musical which debuted on 16 September 1998 in Paris. It is based upon the novel Notre-Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame) by the French novelist Victor Hugo. The music was composed by Riccardo Cocciante (also known as Richard Cocciante) and the lyrics are by Luc Plamondon.
Since its debut, it has been professionally played in Belgium, Canada, China, France, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, Luxembourg, Poland, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, United Kingdom and United States, and has been translated into eight languages (English, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Korean, Flemish, Polish, and Kazakh). A shorter version in English was performed in 2000 in Las Vegas, Nevada (United States) and a full-length London production, also in English, ran for seventeen months. Several songs from the show, such as "Vivre", "Belle" and "Le temps des cathédrales", have been released as singles with a huge success in French speaking countries.
Notre-Dame de Paris, according to the Guinness Book of Records, had the most successful first year of any musical ever. The score has been recorded at least seven times to date (2007): the original French concept album, which featured Israeli singer Achinoam Nini (aka Noa) as Esmeralda was followed by a live, complete recording of the original Paris cast. A complete recording of the score in Italian was made, along with a single disc of highlights in Spanish from the Barcelona production. The original London cast album featured several of the original Paris stars, but only preserved a fraction of the score in English.
