Ten Little Chances to be Free

Some ADD random fandom for you:

Two New York Times articles on the ill-fated Paris revival, spaced six months apart. Kind of sad, really.
October 30, 1991.
May 16, 1992.

Interview with Herbert Kretzmer published in The Barricade back in 1998. Addresses things like why the lyrics to A Heart Full of Love are so stupid, how Valjean's animosity towards Marius during the barricade scenes got the chop, the mysterious non-rhyming lyric in Castle on a Cloud, and assorted other things. PDF; HTML.

(Side note: it makes me sad that The Barricade was before my time. If anyone has old issues they could send or scan, I would love you forever.)

Karen Elliott is going to be auctioning off small props and memorabilia she's collected in her time in the tour and Broadway ensemble, I assume on ebay. So keep an eye out.

It occurs to me that while I'd love to see I Saw Him Once actually performed, I really don't want to hear what they'd do to the orchestrations. The current string-quartet arrangement on Broadway would ruin it, to say nothing of a subpar Cosette.

Tangentially related, but... the Nomenclature des voies database is down! This makes me unhappy. :(

While browsing a little bookshop in Montreuil-sur-Mer, I came upon an annotated copy of Les Misérables. Most of the notes weren't terribly interesting, just explaining some of the more obscure cultural references, so I didn't end up buying it. But I do remember two of the notes:

1. Feuilly was based on a real person Hugo knew, a self-educated fanmaker whose name I've forgotten. Given this, his lack of personality in canon surprises me a bit. Perhaps since Hugo knew the fellow, he couldn't reduce him that easily to a character sketch, and confined himself to noting facts about his life?
2. With the Orestes and Pylades metaphor, Hugo deliberately draws attention to the sequence of the letters: the E of Enjolras and the G of Grantaire are separated, but only by an F. The editor speculates that it probably stood for Femme, which made me do an undignified sporfle right there in the bookshop.

And speaking of dusty little bookshops, and the really random things one finds in them, who wants to read a letter from Ferdinand-Philippe, duc d'Orléans, to the Marshal Soult, concerning the 1832 insurrection? Apparently he was in Marseille at the time, and royally pissed off that he couldn't be in Paris.

Double post of d00000m!

I am not usually a fan of the quizling-type memes, and in fact don't like memes much at all (although I seem to fall prey to them often enough, as my recent entries will testify =P)...

...but this was funny because it was so true.

( Miscellaneous amusing fandom tidbits )

Nothing else to see here, these aren't the droids you're looking for, move along, move along.