‘Crazy’ duo strikes
By Tim Ryan
musical gold
Star-BulletinTHERE are consistent themes among many successful people, especially artists.
They aren't afraid of straying from the herd; they see their eccentricities as valuable resources; and they listen, really listen, to just a few people.
So, when French singer-turned-composer Claude- Michel Schonberg and his would-be partner Alain Boublil decided in 1973 to write a French musical they believed told a compelling story, the pair disregarded admonitions of financial disaster and artistic suicide.
In creating the first French rock musical, "La Revolution Francais," Schonberg even played Louis XVI, and later co-produced the double gold album for the show. The stage version was a huge success in Paris.
"It was a very naive work, but a good draft for 'Les Miserables,' " said Schonberg, 55, in a telephone interview from St. Tropez where he's vacationing. "And when we started writing 'La Revolution Francaise,' we caught the virus of the musical. When we worked on that show, the two of us became the team that we are today."
They have become one of the most successful partnerships in musical history, producing "Les Miserables," "Martin Guerre" -- which won the 1996 Olivier Award for Best Musical -- and "Miss Saigon," which opens tonight at the Blaisdell Concert Hall.
"We were told over and over again that to be successful artistically and financially in France you do not write musicals because this is a country where musicals don't exist," Schonberg said. "They said we were completely crazy and mad. Well, we were quite mad."They also were warned that any credibility and success they had achieved in the pop music world would be lost.
Schonberg was a successful pop songwriter. In 1968 he had written "Tous les Jours a Quatre Heures" ("Every day at four o'clock"). Boublil at the time was an A&R man for a music publishing company whose responsibility was to attract new songwriters. He immediately wanted to buy the rights to "Tous les Jours."
"I don't remember why I wrote this song about a young girl who's bored with her life," Schonberg said. "What matters is that Alain had a crush on it."
They teamed up and would eventually write rock musicals. About a year after the success of "La Revolution," Schonberg was still writing songs that nobody wanted to sing, so Boublil convinced him to sing them himself.
"It wasn't what I wanted to do," said Schonberg, who wanted only to compose.
Boublil and Frank Pourcel produced Schonberg's album "Le Premier Pas," which hit No. 1 for 16 weeks in France, selling 850,000 copies. After that, they went to Paris to fulfill their ambitions.
"When I was a little boy I used to say to my parents: 'If tomorrow I become a butcher, it's to be the best butcher in the world.' But there was no choice about what I would become. I was born a composer,"he said.
"I recorded my songs because no one else wanted to. It's not that I dislike entertainers, it's that I never thought I was good at it or convincing. I felt like a clown up there and I couldn't cope with doing the same thing over and over. It's not my cup of tea.
"But when you compose something about love and life and it comes alive on stage with a performer who can carry that message; that is very satisfying."
In 1980, after two years work on the score, "Les Miserables" opened in Paris, where it was seen by more than a half-million people. The recording was awarded two gold discs in 1981. In 1983 Schonberg produced an opera album in Paris with Julia-Migenes Johnson and the Monte Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra. Since working on the London production of "Les Miserables" and co-producing its London cast album as well as the Grammy Award-winning Broadway cast album, Schonberg has been involved in the casting of all of the American, Japanese, Australian and future productions of "Les Miserables."
On stage in "Miss Saigon" the audience sees the large picture that Schonberg saw in a French magazine --of a crying Vietnamese woman leaving her daughter with her GI father. "She knows this is the last day she'll see her daughter."
Schonberg was attracted to the story because of his childhood interest in the opera "Madame Butterfly." "Miss Saigon" is about a girl who loses her heart to an American GI during the fall of Saigon.
The popularity of "Saigon," which took about five years to write, is the universal understanding of a mother willing to make extreme sacrifices for the good of her children. "The story comes from the gut," Schonberg said.
He describes partner Boublil as a slow-motion, thinking person who likes the details.
"I go straight to the point very fast," he said. "So there's a kind of complementary relation between us: I know where we have to go, he shows me the way."
There are only two people Schonberg listens to regarding his work: Boublil and producer Cameron Mackintosh, perhaps the world's most successful theater producer. "Whatever advice other people might give, I'm just not interested," Schonberg said.
The collaboration has worked so well, Schonberg said, because the men's wives are good friends.
"If problems arise when two men work together as closely as we do, they usually come from the wives' jealousy of that relationship," Schonberg said. "Through my collaboration with Alain I achieved what I wanted to do in my life. Before meeting him I wanted to be Leonard Bernstein or Andrew Lloyd Webber. After 'Les Miserables,' for the first time in my life I wanted to be myself."
"Martin Guerre," their current project, had its American premiere last month.
The show is based on the true story of the 16th-century Frenchman who, left for dead on the battlefield, returns home to find his identity has been assumed by his friend and fellow soldier.
Miss Saigon
On stage: Tonight through Nov. 14. Shows at 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays; 7:30 p.m. Sundays. Weekend matinees, 2 p.m.
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