Eponine dies before getting to finish her sentence with "grow". Later, her brother Gavroche is killed just before finishing his sentence with "up". He was about ten and she was seventeen, so those two missing words together, "grow up" symbolizes what neither was given the chance to do.
Kevin you are so knowledgeable and talented that you blew my mind with breaking down this score. I learned so much. I still need to hear it sang by Lea or even Samantha.
Please make more of Breaking down the score!!! I really love it. It helps me appreciate songs more. I didn’t like this song as much, but now I understand it’s really clever. Thank you!
Phenomenal timing, and so helpful! I have been working on this song without instruction beginning three weeks ago for a fundraising concert, and I’m just delighted. Thank you so very much.
Great video Kevin!!! I'm currently playing Marius in my local City theatre and this was very helpfull. Doing research I asked a friend who lived in Belgium for many years and he explained me some french gramaric. Answering your theory the 'ponine thing in the Score is because in some french words, you barely pronounce the E in the begining of the Word, so the lyricist adjousted it to the metric. Some of the times is pronounced Eponine, and sometimes is 'ponine acording to the lyric
I've not looked into the background of this myself, but as a fan of the original book, her name is not "Eponine" but "Éponine" and I wonder if that was officially changed for the musical. Otherwise, I think 'Ponine just works like a nickname, as the musical version of her and Marius seem to gave a more friendly relationship than in the original.
Such a shame they cut most of this song in the School Edition. It's so amazing, and every high school who performs it gets jipped out of performing it in its full glory. And don't even get me started on the Confrontation...
I can't imagine Les Mis without a Little Fall of Rain, but I believe it's not even on the movie soundtrack. Somebody needs to be tortured for making that choice.
It's funny that you joke about Éponine being a "selfish bitch" because in the book she actually hid the letter she got from Cosette that she was supposed to mail to Marius. She only gave it to him because she was dying. Éponine has this kind of sad revelation where she felt envious of Cosette to the point where she thought she was happy about the idea of Marius dying on the barricade, and her blocking the shot meant for him was a sort of subconscious decision. Of course, I wouldn't go so far as calling her something like a "selfish bitch" for this, as she's pretty young and we know she's had a very unfortunate life that she's had little control over, but I thought it was "funny" in a way.
