Broadway and West End favorite Les Misérables, unavailable for new stagings in North America for the last 10 years, has been re-released for licensing by Music Theatre International.
“Les Misérables is a pillar of the musical theatre world and everyone at MTI is eager to see the wonderful ways that communities around North America bring it to life on their stages,” says MTI President and CEO Drew Cohen in a statement. “The beloved score is enough to bring audiences to tears and onto their feet and the incredible story offers performers unique opportunities to shine.”
Shows are typically held from regional, education, and amateur theatrical markets while major professional productions continue to run on major stages, including on Broadway and national tours. Les Misérables was actually one of a very short list of titles that bucked this trend in 2001, releasing a revised version that could be performed by high schools even as the original staging continued its professional run. The most recent union national tour, the sixth launched of the Alain Boublil-Claude-Michel Schöenberg musical since 1987, played its final performance last month in Boston. An arena concert of the musical is currently on a world tour that will conclude at Radio City Music Hall beginning later this month.
The musical brings Victor Hugo‘s classic epic novel to the stage, following Jean Valjean in 19th-century France from a 19-year prison sentence for stealing a single loaf of bread through a lifelong struggle for redemption, all while being pursued by a police inspector hellbent on his recapture. The work premiered with a French-language production in Paris in 1980. It caught the attention of British producer Cameron Mackintosh, who produced an English-language revision in London’s West End in 1985 (adding lyricist Herbert Kretzmer to the mix, along with additional material by James Fenton). It was in English that the musical became a worldwide phenomenon, coming to Broadway in 1987 and becoming one of the long-running British-import stalwarts of the 1980s. Following a 16-year Broadway run, the musical has been revived twice on the Main Stem, and continues in London’s West End to this day. A film adaptation starring Hugh Jackman released in 2012.
Licensed productions can create a Broadway-quality Playbill program with the iconic yellow-and-black Playbill header via PLAYBILLDER. As with most MTI-licensed shows, users can automatically import licensor-approved character and song lists, and billing pages into their program using PLAYBILLDER Express. Learn more at PLAYBILLDER.com.
Visit MTIShows.com for more information.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source playbill.com ’
