Broadway performers. The impact cannot be denied, the bleeding-heart sentimentality cannot be matched, and the songs cannot get out of your head. You may have seen the show one or one hundred times, but that sense that Something Long and Important is Happening never leaves you. It belonged to and birthed an entire generation of theatre-lovers, while still accessible to younger Broadway acolytes with a vested interest in what came before their place in the sun.
The story of young citizens fighting for justice and a new world order only shows that the world we leave behind for our posterity will always have a hopefulness that change is going to come. Time and again, through a prologue and two acts, we see failure on a grand scale: a broken justice system, a man excessively punished for theft, a mother shamed for providing for her child, a generation of young radicals dying for their cause.
All the efforts of one character meets resistance by another. The unrequited love of one goes unnoticed by the other. Because, life reminds us, our failures must define us just as much as our successes. If we never fail, we would never understand the satisfaction of success. If we always got what we want, we could not appreciate the true quality of our achievement.
If everybody wins, then the game of life has only reached a stalemate. In order to better love the complicated and frustrating nature of this competition called Living, we have to fail a few times in order to want to win.
In the grand scheme of French history, the June Rebellion was a blip on the radar. Many know of the first French Revolution that ended the monarchy in , famously beheading Louis XVI and introducing a democratic republic in French republicans who a generation ago lived in a democratic nation were incensed at having a second monarch foisted upon them, while Legitimists still loyal to the royal family supported the restoration of Louis-Philippe.
