


TWO ACTS MUSICAL BASED ON VICTOR HUGO'S CLASSICAL NOVEL
Script / music / lyrics by Tibor Zonai

England, The end of the XVII. Century.
Child trafficking is booming. Poor parents often sell their little ones, and merchants distort them and show them in fair comedies. The new king’s decree punishes these horrors, so the merchants try to get rid of the children.

The small, mutilated-faced Gwynplaine is exposed from a boat on an abandoned coastline. In the hands of a dead woman, she finds a blind little girl she takes with her and baptizes Dea. After being driven out of the town where he asks to eat, an elderly comedian living as a hermit, Ursus welcomes the two orphans into his house.


Fifteen years later Ursus organizes a small company to come to London to perform on a suburban stage in the evenings. Gwynplaine will be a celebrated star. Meanwhile, Dea and Gwynplaine's brotherhood turns into love. Gwynplaine is called to a secret meeting by a princess after one of the performances. The boy would leave excitedly, but then dusters would lead him in front of the sheriff, from whom he would learn that he was from the royal family, according to a letter.


Ursus — seeing the dustballs take the boy and send his clothes back to him — thinks Gwynplain has been executed. He can't tell Daa the boy's death, but she understands it. Losing her love is getting weaker.

Gwynplaine is the member of the Upper House in London. After his heartbreaking, passionate speech, the lords ridicule him.

