Quasimodo

Synopsis

Bart wrote the words and music for Quasimodo, based on Victor Hugo's 1831 novel Notre Dame de Paris in 1963. The poignant tale, set in 15th-century Paris, of the love between the deformed bellringer and the beautiful gypsy girl Esmerelda nearly made it to Broadway, where it would undoubtedly have joined the list of Bart's stage hits: Lock Up Your Daughters, Fings Ain't Wot They Used t'Be, Oliver!, Blitz! and Maggie May. But there was disagreement about who should direct the show, and it was never produced in his lifetime.

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 25 March 2013

Would it prove to be Lionel Bart's lost masterpiece? How wonderful that would have been... The great composer tinkered with adapting Victor Hugo's other monster novel (not Les Misérables) for half his life, from the mid-1960s until he died in 1999; but the result, never fully staged before, is as nobbled and malformed as the protagonist.

Bart worked from a twelve-page synopsis of The Hunchback of Notre Dame that he commissioned from his secretary. His libretto is a dog's dinner of a précis that sounds like a rip-off of The Phantom of the Opera: ugly loser in the belfry pines for unobtainable gypsy girl who is competed for by a warped archdeacon and a pompous soldier.

And just to remind...

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Latest User Review

Richard Morris - 27 March 2013:

I really enjoyed it.Had a kinda naive fresh quality to it with all the perfomers giving 100%...

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