The day after “Les Misérables” premiered at London’s Barbican Theater 40 years ago this week, its creative team gathered for a party to toast a successful debut, complete with bottles of champagne adorned with special “Les Misérables” labels.

40年前的本周，《悲惨世界》在伦敦巴比肯剧院完成首演后次日，创作团队举行庆功宴，大家打开饰有“悲惨世界”特制标签的香槟，庆祝首演成功。

But the celebration quickly “turned into a wake,” recalled John Caird, who directed the production with Trevor Nunn. As attendees read that day’s newspapers, it was clear that the musical had not won over Britain’s theater critics.

但与特雷弗·纳恩一起导演了该剧的约翰·凯尔德回忆说，这场派对“很快就变成了守灵仪式”。翻开当天的报纸，大家发现这部音乐剧并没有赢得英国戏剧评论界的青睐。

The Evening Standard dismissed it as a “glum opera” more suited to Victorian times than 1980s Britain. The Daily Mail lamented that Caird and Nunn had transformed the “tidal wave of emotions” in Victor Hugo’s novel “into ripples of cheap sentiment.” It was “The Glums,” the review added.

《旗帜晚报》斥其为“苦情歌剧”，更适合维多利亚时代，而非1980年代的英国。《每日邮报》哀叹，导演凯尔德和纳恩将雨果原著中的“情感洪流”化为了“廉价情绪的涟漪”。这篇评论还挖苦该剧是“愁苦世界”。

Adding to the pressure, Cameron Mackintosh, the show’s lead producer, had just 48 hours to decide whether to pay for a West End transfer. If he didn’t, the musical would vanish after just a few weeks when it ended its Barbican run.

令创作团队压力倍增的是，当时制作人卡梅隆·麦金托什必须在48小时内做出决定是否追加资金让剧目转战伦敦西区。若他否决的话，这部剧在巴比肯剧院演出数周后便将永远谢幕了。

Fortunately for the team, the critics didn’t have the final say.

幸运的是，评论家们的意见并非最后的裁决。

“The word of mouth around the show was astonishing,” Caird recalled in a recent interview at his home in the Highgate neighborhood of London. The Barbican had to quickly expand its box office team to field phone calls from theatergoers seeking tickets.

“这部剧的口碑好到令人震惊，”凯尔德在位于伦敦海格特的家中接受采访时回忆说。由于购票电话如潮水般涌来，巴比肯剧院不得不紧急增派售票人员来应对需求。

It was “two or three days” of worry, Caird said. “Then it became apparent this thing was unstoppable.”

凯尔德回忆道，那两三日着实令人焦虑，“但随后便发现这部剧的势头已不可阻挡。”

Today, “Les Misérables” — the story of Jean Valjean, a former convict, being relentlessly pursued by Javert, an unforgiving police officer — is an icon of musical theater. It has run for over 15,500 performances in London and is a staple of school theater programs in the United States. On Wednesday, the musical’s producers announced that an arena concert version of the show would make its North American debut at Radio City Music Hall in New York next year, from July 23 to Aug. 2.

今天，讲述了前科犯冉·阿让遭冷酷无情的警官沙威穷追不舍的《悲惨世界》，已成为经典音乐剧。它在伦敦上演超15500场，也是美国校园戏剧中最常排演的剧目之一。本周三，制作方宣布，将于明年7月23日至8月2日在纽约无线电城音乐厅举行该剧音乐会世界巡演的北美首演。

It’s also been translated in 22 languages and staged in 53 countries. Next month, productions are set to open in Madrid and Shanghai.

该剧还被翻译成22种语言，在53个国家演出。下个月，马德里和上海也将迎来该剧的上演。

The idea of turning Victor Hugo’s sweeping 1,400-page novel about poverty and social upheaval in 19th-century France into a musical was actually that of two Frenchmen — the composer Claude-Michel Schönberg and the lyricist Alain Boublil — who, inspired by British and American shows, created “Les Misérables” in 1980 and staged it in Paris.

将雨果这部描绘19世纪法国贫困与社会动荡的1400页鸿篇巨制改编为音乐剧的构想，其实源自两位法国人——作曲家克劳德-米歇尔·勋伯格与作词人阿兰·布布利。他们受英美音乐剧启发，于1980年创作了法语版《悲惨世界》，并在巴黎首演。

About three years later, Mackintosh heard a cast recording and, blown away by the music, decided to bring it to London. Caird similarly recalled being “completely captured by the theatricality and emotion” of the songs, particularly what became “On My Own” and “I Dreamed a Dream.”

约三年后，制作人麦金托什听到该剧的卡司专辑后被音乐所震撼，决意将其引入伦敦。凯尔德同样忆及自己被剧中歌曲的“戏剧张力与情感彻底征服”，尤其是后来成为经典的《独自一人》(On My Own)和《我曾有梦》(I Dreamed a Dream)。

Still, Caird said, the creative team knew the French musical needed an overhaul: It was little more than “a series of tableaux,” and required audiences to know Hugo’s book inside out.

不过，凯尔德也坦言，创作团队当时就意识到这部法语音乐剧需要一次彻底的重塑：它几乎只是“把一个个舞台造型串起来”，观众要对雨果原著了如指掌才能看懂。

左起：阿兰·布布利、卡梅隆·麦金托什和克劳德-米歇尔·勋伯格1985年在巴比肯剧院版《悲惨世界》的排练现场。

So Caird, Nunn, Schönberg and Boublil, along with James Fenton, a poet, were soon reading Hugo’s tome and trying to work out a new structure, eventually deciding to open the musical with a scene in which Jean Valjean steals silver candlesticks from a bishop, only for the prelate to forgive him.

于是，凯尔德、纳恩、勋伯格和布布利，再加上诗人詹姆斯·芬顿，很快便开始研读雨果的这部巨著，并试图重新设计剧情结构。最终，他们决定让音乐剧以这样一个场景开场：冉·阿让偷了一位主教的银烛台，但获得了后者的宽恕。

Suddenly, Caird said, the character’s motivations were clear: Valjean believed in the New Testament idea of forgiveness, while Javert, his pursuer, adhered to a sterner Old Testament form of justice.

凯尔德说，这一改动让人物的动机瞬间变得清晰：冉·阿让信奉《新约》中关于宽恕的理念，而追捕他的沙威则坚持《旧约》的严苛正义。

“As a bunch of liberal humanists, we had tried to avoid every mention of religion,” Caird said, but “sewing God into the show was what animated the characters.”

“我们这帮自由人文主义者本来想尽量回避宗教元素，”凯尔德说，“但当我们把上帝缝进剧情中，人物才真正鲜活起来。”

Even with such breakthroughs, progress was slow at first. Fenton, a perfectionist, took so long to write the libretto that Mackintosh had to delay the musical’s planned opening by a year, according to Edward Behr’s “The Complete Book of Les Misérables.” Eventually, Herbert Kretzmer, a librettist and critic for The Daily Mail, took over.

即便有这样的突破，创作进展最初依然缓慢。根据爱德华·贝尔在《悲惨世界全书》中的记载，苛求完美的芬顿在撰写剧本时花费了太长时间，以至于麦金托什不得不将音乐剧原定的首演时间推迟了整整一年。最终，《每日邮报》的评论家兼剧作家赫伯特·克雷茨默接手了这项工作。

Caird said the team had continually changed the musical in rehearsals. One Friday just weeks before opening, for instance, they decided that the actor Colm Wilkinson, the original Valjean, needed a ballad to “really let his voice off a leash.” The next Monday, Schönberg played everyone the gentle tune of “Bring Him Home,” one of the musical’s most beloved songs.

凯尔德说，创作团队在排练过程中还在不断修改剧本。例如，首演前数周的某个周五，他们决定给饰演冉·阿让的演员科尔姆·威尔金森加上一首能够“尽情释放歌喉”的歌曲。到了接下来的周一，勋伯格便拿出了那首温柔之作——《带他回家》(Bring Him Home)，后来它成为了剧中的金曲。

Even small changes were crucial. During a recent interview in his grand home — which Caird said the musical’s success had made possible — he riffled through boxes of his rehearsal notes. He pointed out that the musical’s most famous song had initially opened with “Do you hear the people sing / Singing the song of common men.” In rehearsals, Kretzmer changed the lyric to “a song of angry men.”

哪怕是细微的调整，亦关乎成败。凯尔德最近在自己的豪宅——他说是该剧的成功让他住上了这样的地方——接受采访时，他翻检着成箱的排练笔记，指出那首传世名曲最初的开场本是“可听见人民在歌唱/高唱平凡众生之歌”。在排练过程中，克雷茨默将其改为“高唱愤怒众生之歌”。

By the premiere, Caird recalled, everyone involved thought they had something special, so it was a bit of a shock when the critics disagreed.

凯尔德回忆，首演时所有参与者皆认定此剧是一部杰作，因此剧评人的恶评令人错愕。

Lyn Gardner, one of Britain’s longest-serving theater critics, was one of those who originally panned it, writing in City Limits magazine that the musical was “sentimental old tosh.” In a recent interview, Gardner said there had been “a lot of snobbery” around the original show, given that it was a Royal Shakespeare Company co-production and many critics believed that the revered outfit shouldn’t dabble in West End musicals.

英国最资深的戏剧评论家之一琳恩·加德纳当年就猛批了这部剧。她在《城市界限》杂志上写道，这部音乐剧不过是“煽情的陈词滥调”。加德纳在最近一次采访中回忆说，当时对这部作品“存在相当多的门户之见”，因为这竟然是皇家莎士比亚剧团参与的作品，许多评论家认为，这样一个备受尊崇的剧团不应该涉足伦敦西区的音乐剧。

2020年伦敦桑德海姆剧院的工作人员正在更换《悲惨世界》的广告。该剧自1985年起在伦敦持续驻演，是西区驻演时间最长的音乐剧。

Gardner said she stood by her original assessment, but now recognized that “Les Misérables” had many charms. “It does what all great musicals do: It makes you feel,” she said, adding, “It doesn’t make you think so much.”

加德纳表示，她依然坚持当初的评价，但现在她也承认《悲惨世界》确实有许多令人着迷的地方。“它具备所有伟大音乐剧的特质：能让人产生情感共鸣，”她说，“只是它并不会让你深思。”

In addition to the songs’ catchiness and bald emotion, part of the appeal of “Les Misérables” has been its political undertones, with scenes of students trying to overthrow the French government. In recent years, demonstrators in places like Hong Kong, Venezuela and Turkey have sung, “Do you hear the people sing?”

除了那些朗朗上口、情感炽烈的歌曲之外，《悲惨世界》另一重魅力在于其政治隐喻——剧中学生试图推翻法国政府的场景。近年来，香港、委内瑞拉、土耳其等地的示威者都曾高唱《你可听到人民在歌唱》。

Dann Fink, a producer who acted in the original Los Angeles production of “Les Misérables,” said he believed that the musical’s message of “fighting for what you believe in” struck a chord with audiences. He recalled one night in June 1989 when the cast, backstage during intermission, watched live TV news coverage of tanks rolling into Tiananmen Square in Beijing as the Chinese government tried to stop student-led antigovernment demonstrations.

曾参演《悲惨世界》洛杉矶首演、后来成为制片人的丹·芬克说，他认为这部音乐剧“为信念而战”的主题引发了观众的深切共鸣。他回忆起1989年6月的某个夜晚，在演出中场休息时，剧组成员在后台的电视机上看到中国政府出动坦克进入北京天安门广场、镇压学生主导的反政府抗议活动的新闻画面。

That footage, Fink recalled, seemed to echo the musical’s story, and soon he was onstage, climbing up a barricade with a flag in hand. “We ran on feeling like we needed to vent our rage for what was happening to those people in China,” Fink recalled. “We were singing to empower them.”

那些画面似乎呼应了本剧的故事，芬克回忆道，很快他就登台了，手持旗帜攀越一道街垒。“我们上台时有种要宣泄怒火的感觉，我们为中国人民遭遇的不公而愤怒。”他回忆说：“我们是在用歌声为他们加油打气。”

“I’ve never had a more charged night in a theater,” he added.

“那是我的剧场生涯中最热血沸腾的夜晚，”他补充道。

Caird said the story’s political overtones were clear to the creative team, but to his mind the musical’s success was down more to the universality of the characters: people struggling against injustice and their own personal obstacles. “Deep down, so many members of the audience feel the same sense of fate or destiny about their own life journeys,” he said.

凯尔德说，创作团队清楚剧本的政治寓意，但他认为作品成功更应归功于人物命运的普适性——那些与不公抗争、与命运抗争的个体。“在内心深处，无数观众在角色身上照见了自身命运的轨迹，”他说。

That is really why “Les Misérables” has lasted 40 years, Caird said, adding: “It’s never going to go away, is it?”

这正是《悲惨世界》能经久不衰、屹立40年的原因，凯尔德总结道。他还补充说，“它必将永葆生命力，对吧？”