Just a Little Torture for Your Sunday.

[jackks]

A clip from Russian version of "La Torture", with Marakulin and 'I'm not sure who' as playing Esmeralda. It's pirated video, but is nevertheless actually pretty high quality, and very close up - if a bit wobbly

Comments

[bleed_peroxide]

Goodness, this is probably the best adaptation of that scene out of all the versions of the musical. Esmeralda was perfect - young, gypsy-like, and she honestly looks like a frightened rabbit when faced with the prospect of torture. (Helene didn't even react much beyond just being mad at him towards the end, and moving around a little bit verses struggling against the men holding her.)

Frollo? Incredible. His facial expressions are so nuanced, where even a furrowing of the eyebrows shows that his resolve is cracking when faced with his Esmeralda being tortured. He doesn't exaggerate the reactions but instead lets them flow naturally from fanaticism to a sort of... I can't explain save for that his face falls as he realizes what he's doing. I think I like his version of "La torture" even more than Lavoie's!

[eticatka]

I think it's Svetlana Svetikova who plays Esmeralda, but I'm not sure.
Well... Marakulin is really incredible :) But Esmeralda doesn't look like she is really innocent - that's just my point :))
And OMG, the lyrics... They're so weak, that they spoil all the great impression of Marakulin's voice :)

[jackks]

You know, I'm starting to wonder (though I don't want to believe it) that NDP might have... a lyric problem. As in my two favourite versions are the two I understand very little of i.e. the French and Russian versions. But as for the two versions I can actually understand? As everyone knows, the English lyrics are simply horrorfic... but I also find the Italian lyrics pretty... uninspiring. Very, very simplistic. Though, anyone Italian would probably want my guts for thinking such a thing (but most Italians are also under the general misguided impression that Vittorio Matteucci is the best Frollo, which is just wrong).

And if the Russian lyrics are lacking as well... Kinda makes me want to wonder about the source...

*stops blasphemous thoughts*

Out of interest, was the show successful in Russia? It kinda tanked in England :P

[eticatka]

Well, I don't think that Marakulin is the best Frollo. As for me, Daniel Lavoie is the best :)) But Marakulin is really the only human face in Russian NDdP (well, one of the two human faces, the other is Sergei Lee), I think. Have you seen the Russian version of "La Monture" with Anastasia Stotskaya? Maybe it's the worst Fleur-de-Lys in the world...

The source is perfect, they just don't know how to translate :D I tried to translate the original version into Russian, and my translations, though they weren't perfect, were closer to the original lyrsics than the official Russian lyrics...

The show was very successful! I have never seen it in the theater, because I was only eight years old when it was on. But even now people are obsessed with the Russian NDdP, they're sure that the Russian version is the best... I get infuriated when they say something like "Anton Makarsky is the best, and Patrick Fiori is just an ugly Armenian"...

Quote from original post: "I could prattle on endlessly"

[jackks]

Yeah, Italian's think their version is "the best" too *face palm