Notre Dame de Paris (1998)

Sets and costumes are stark and simple - gypsies seem to find their clothes from modern-day garbage, Esme is stuck in ugly peasoup-colored dress - but what Notre-Dame de Paris loses in visual beauty and spectacle it wins with wonderful music and drama. Helene Segara is strong-voiced and suitably tortured as innocent gypsy Esmeralda, Garou is my favorite Quasimodo and Daniel Lavoie (too handsome to be Frollo, actually) is wonderfully hammy as racist, repressed priest: he gets many of the best and most evocative songs, sings them very well indeed and manages to evoke odd mixture of hate toward Frollo's actions and sympathy toward the man himself. Weird. For some reason librettists has changed Frollo's obsession to gypsy Esmeralda - his "angel of darkness" - from lust/infatuation to lust/hate. Unfortunately it has Hugo's downer ending, which is, quite frankly, even more depressive and frustrating than it's touching, but the result is oddly captivating.

There are no words to describe when watching this movie, it's like a breath of fresh air. Whether you are fluent in french or not you will come to appreciate this movie instantly. It is a classic story of boy loves girl who loves someone else. If anyone has captured a classic it is Victor Hugo.A great deal of people contributed to the beautiful theatrics in this production and although everyone sang beautifully three people stood out in my mind. Bruno Pelletier who played Gringoire, Garou who played Quasimodo, and last but not least Hélène Ségara who played Esmeralda. Bruno Pelletier's voice was so pure, so pure in fact that I never would have guessed he was singing live. I liked Garou's voice in particular because it was like a modernized rock voice meshed with classical ballads. Hélène's voice was just amazing, her range was endless. The sound of their voices were so good that it literally brought tears to my eyes.I strongly recommend this movie to everyone and I give it a ten out of ten simply for the fact that though in french it portrays the universal language of love, which is translated very clearly.

"Notre-Dame De Paris" is the best musical I have ever seen! With his stunning voice, Bruno Pelletier (the most wonderful singer I have ever heard of) shines as the poet Gringoire, receiving gold and quadruple platinum for his act. Daniel Lavoie plays Jean-Claude Frollo with his powerful voice. Hélène Ségara takes on the role of Esmeralda spectacularly, and Luck Mervil plays the part of her guardian Clopin with passion. When Garou sings you cannot do anything but listen, since he sounds amazing, interpreting the role of the love-sick Quasimodo. Using his voice, which contains the softest sound I have ever heard, for the role of Phoebus, Patrick Fiori does a truly excellent job. And last but definitely not least, Julie Zenatti uses her unique and special voice for the role of Fleur-De-Lys, at the age of only 17. Richard Cocciante (music) and Luc Plamondon (lyrics) have done the very difficult job of sticking to the story by Victor Hugo, and still managing to create a fantastic and beautiful musical. Because of its success, it has been translated into different languages such as (for instance) English and Italian. This masterpiece is most honestly worth your time!

This is definitely a great musical, definitely one of th best adaptation of the original work. As the previous person said, but there was a mistake made by him or her, Bruno Pelletier was Gringoire, not Frollo. The whole musical was amazing, every singer had an amazing performance, communicating emotion even to non-french speakers. It has beautiful music and lyrics, as well as singers that can sing them well. Out of every one of them my favourite is definitely the Quebecois Bruno Pelletier. He had a very beautiful voice and played the character of Gringoire really well (one thing to note is that Gringoire's character is changed a lot, but Bruno Pelletier was superb in his role.) Even thought there are changes from the original work the musical stayed rather true to the original story. A work very worth seeing, even if you don't understand one word of French it can still touch you. (there are subtittles in many language)