In New York, too, it’s time for cathedrals: more than twenty years after its French premiere, the hit musical Notre Dame de Paris premiered on the Broadway grounds, where it received a standing ovation.

At the end of the adventures of the beautiful Esmeralda, performed by the Lebanese singer Hiba Tawaji, and the hunchbacked Quasimodo, performed and sung by Angelo Del Vecchio, the spectators of the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center, an institution in New York. , have applauded the company and the orchestra for a long time on Wednesday night.

Since its creation in 1998 by Luc Plamondon and Richard Cocciante, the musical adapted from the homonymous novel by Victor Hugo has toured the world, performed in 23 countries and in nine languages, but it is in French, with subtitles on the screens, that the New York public discovered it.

“Modesty”

Musical hits, Beautiful, To live, dance my emeraldthey were sung on the stage where the New York City Ballet usually performs.

“Being here is humbly trying to return to this country (…) that does not open up so easily,” the musical composer of ‘Notre Dame’, Richard Cocciante, New York, the first of twelve, told AFP. performances

For him, what marks the longevity of the work, which has toured China, South Korea or Russia in recent years, is its “timeless” character, a recipe that mixes references to the time of the novel and more modern ingredients. , in costumes, choreography, scenery or music.

“The main theme of Notre Dame de Paris is human difference,” he recalls. The bell ringer Quasimodo, the priest Frollo and the captain Phoebus covet the gypsy Esmeralda in a world of destitute and foreigners, “without papers” who seek “asylum in Notre Dame”.

“We feel like we’re getting somewhere. Broadway is right next door,” savors Daniel Lavoie, who plays and sings Frollo from the start of the play. He recalls that the musical had indeed circled the United States, to Las Vegas, but “in an abridged, truncated, English version.”

“It was a diluted version for the Americans and it didn’t represent the play as I know it, I don’t think it worked very well,” he adds.