You may have heard "Live (for the One I Love)" as a Celine Dion single around 2000. But it was actually Tina Arena, performing here, who played the part of Esmeralda in the London stage production of Notre Dame de Paris. She's Australian, but she also does a great version in French, the original title "Vivre." No stranger to the London stage, she has played Sally Bowles in Cabaret and Roxie Hart in Chicago.
In this story based on Victor Hugo's "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," the Gypsy Esmeralda is in love with Phoebus, a captain in the King's Archers, who is engaged to another. Esmeralda is sent to prison as a sorceress by Frollo, the Archdeacon, because he loves her and she will not return his love. Here in the bleak prison Esmeralda sings of her love for Phoebus and proclaims that her love will live on, even if she dies. And alas, she does die.
French music and lyrics are by Ricardo Coccianti and Luc Plamondon. Will Jennings provided the English interpretation.
