Wonderful Production

I adore Notre Dame de Paris. I was first introduced to it in 2000, while visiting friends in Montreal. They took me to a bar called Le Pierrot. We sat in the balcony, and a singer (who I was never able to identify later) sang "Le Temps Des Cathedrales." I loved the song, and my friends happened to have the CD soundtrack. On my last day there, one of them bought me a cassette soundtrack.

Once I got home, I listened to the cassette over and over again, but I wanted more. I went on eBay and bought the CD. Then I bought the double CD that had the full musical, and finally the DVD, which I watched over and over again. I also bought the English CD, but the language just isn't as pretty.

My appreciation branched out farther, as I eventually bought and read Victor Hug's book (in English) and started collecting the various movies featuring Quasimodo's story. I have versions from several decades. I think the only one I actually haven't seen is the Disney version, but I figure I will watch that one day too. I noticed that of all the versions that I saw, the Notre Dame De Paris musical was the truest to the story in terms of the most important aspects of it. (Gringoire wasn't infatuated with a goat in the musical, but I think that's OK.) The musical is lacking some content, but musicals imply more than movies do, which imply more than books do. None of the versions managed to include the book's multiple pages of the king listing all the royal bills.

I really like Bruno Pelletier and Garou and everyone else in the cast. I have several Bruno CDs.

I just thought I would share how a simple event can lead to such an obsession. I'm not as obsessed as I was for the first couple of years, but Notre Dame De Paris is still very close to my heart. I almost never buy a DVD, and I shelled out 35 bucks for that one, so it definitely was important to me.