Les Misérables, or Les Mis, has become a bit of a staple when thinking of musicals in the last decade because of the recent movie version with an all star cast, but it actually got it's start as a book in 1862 by Victor Hugo. It's a historical fiction novel which is set from 1815 into the June Rebellion in Paris in 1832; and the book is considered to be one of the greatest novels of the 19th century. That then was turned into a concept album, which became a musical first presented at Palais des Sports in Paris in 1980. In 1983, Peter Farago sent the concept album to Cameron Mackintosh, who had recently brought Cats to the stage, to do an English version for the stage. Mackintosh eventually agreed and teamed up with the Royal Shakespeare Company and made it happen. It opened on West End in 1985, and the success there brought it to Broadway. It was on Broadway from 1987 until 2003, with 6,680 performances before closing, making it the fifth longest running Broadway show to date. It also got nominated for 12 Tony Awards, winning 8 of them. Since then it has been performed worldwide multiple times, and has a movie adaption without singing (which was the first I heard of it), a musical movie adaption from 2012 that I mentioned earlier with Hugh Jackman, and most recently an adaption on BBC last year. Although going by the musical the only true adaption is the 2012 movie while all others could be considered more adaptions of the novel than the play. The good news is if you haven't seen the musical, you can get a pretty good experience from the movie if you're interested in that.
Peace.
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