Claude-Michel Schonberg

Set in the early 19th Century leading into the Paris Uprising of 1832, Les Miserables, won eight Tony Awards including Best Musical. Based on the novel by Victor Hugo, it started out as a concept album in 1980, with music by composer Claude-Michel Schönberg (b.1944), and French lyrics by Alain Boublil (b.1941) and Jean-Marc Natel (b.1942). It was later adapted for the British stage with an English libretto by Herbert Kretzmer(b.1925), but the 1985 London production was not a great success, running for only three months. That all changed following its 1987 Broadway premiere, and it became the third-longest running production in Broadway history (after The Phantom of the Opera and Cats). Bring Him Home is sung by the central character, Jean Valjean, an escaped convict who had been jailed for 19 years, originally for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his family. Revolution is in the air, and the song is a prayer for safe passage through the impending violence, offered on behalf of Marius, a student in love with Cossette, the young peasant woman Valjean has sworn to protect.

Following the stunning success of their musical version of Les misérables (1985), composer Claude-Michel Schönberg (b.1944) and lyricist Alain Boublil (b.1941) scored another huge success with Miss Saigon (1989), in which they transform the story of Puccini's Madama Butterfly into a Vietnam War-era tragedy. Now That I’ve Seen Her is sung by "Ellen," the betrayed, but nonetheless determined, American wife of "Chris," the G.I. who fathered a child with the innocent Vietnamese girl, "Kim."