It is also amazing how everyone in the story sings the On My Own tune when they're about to die or feel broken hearted. Must have been popular back in the day.
Listen, I don't take my clothes off for anyone, even if it is "artistic". - JANICE
Mimi from Rent? Not that stupid opera thingy I assume by Puccini or whatever. No, she's saved by the power of love. Besides, she had AIDS, not some old person's disease.
Scratch and claw for every day you're worth!
Make them drag you screaming from life, keep dreaming
You'll live forever here on earth.
I, for one, know that. I am not unfamiliar with the symptoms of tuberculosis nor with the romantic interpretations of some of its symptoms in the popular imagination before there was scientific understanding of them, which is why I brought it up in this thread.
As Cher said, "You know, I didn't really think she was gonna die. I knew she was sick....I mean, she was coughing her brains out, and still she had to keep singing!"
My father spent time as a patient at The Will Rogers Institute and his roommate was actor/magician Carl Ballantine. Neither of them would probably have been called radiant, like Fantine or Mimi, but Ballantine did live to the age of 92. My father was not as fortunate.
Hold on a Gershwin picking moment!! Are people on this thread actually starting to infer that musical theatre is not realistic and true to real life!!! :O You should be ashamed of yourselves!
Wikipedia has several citations for those who are interested in learning how this deadly respiratory disease evolved into "the romantic death." It's alluded to with Fantine's glowing presentation when she "returns" for the finale of Les Miz.
It was during this century that tuberculosis was dubbed the White Plague,[46] mal de vivir, and mal du siècle. It was seen as a "romantic disease." Suffering from tuberculosis was thought to bestow upon the sufferer heightened sensitivity. The slow progress of the disease allowed for a "good death" as sufferers could arrange their affairs.[47] The disease began to represent spiritual purity and temporal wealth, leading many young, upper-class women to purposefully pale their skin to achieve the consumptive appearance. British poet Lord Byron wrote, "I should like to die from consumption," helping to popularize the disease as the disease of artists.[48] George Sand doted on her pthitic lover, Frédéric Chopin, calling him her "poor melancholy angel."[49]