Man of La Mancha in French: Joan Diener sings "Un Animal" slowly

Jacques Brel did a French adaptation of the American musical "Man of La Mancha" in 1968. In many ways, the French recording is the most satisfying, particularly Brel's own performance of Don Quixote. Joan Diener reprises her Broadway and London performance as Aldonza. She sings very beautifully but very slowly: on the Broadway cast recording, this song is called "It's All the Same" and lasts three minutes. Here, it is four minutes and eleven seconds. There is a tiny dialogue addition lasting perhaps ten seconds, but the rest of all Joan, milking and milking. . .

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Man of La Mancha
• Joan Diener
• It's All the Same
• Jacques Brel
• Mitch Leigh
• Joe Darion
• Albert Marre
• nepotism
• Cervantes
• Aldonza
• musicals
• Broadway
• tempo
• camp
• bad

[trousertube1]

The song was not performed at this pace in the original production. Diener, great as she was, was self-indulgent and worked mostly with her husband. Most songs are are performed slightly faster on cast albums, and this one is, too, on the original. But what Diener does here (and what she did when she was playing the role on and off for the next twenty years) is much less true to what was in the original production than what is on the original recording.

[1enobarbus]

I agree with Nagennif.

I have the Broadway and West End production albums, and used to have the great ( no disrespect to Richard Kiley ) full recording with Keith Michel. EMI seem to have deleted that, and my cassette tape was disastrously mangled by an errant winding head.

I will pay cash on the nail if I can get another copy of that.

[Nagennif1011]

I don't care what you say... she's phenomenal, a force of nature.

[a12bentm]

The slow pace doesn't make sense at all considering its a musical based in SPAIN. ever heard spanish music? Well its basically like this, only it sounds like you can dance to it. I can hardly crawl to this tempo. Personally it just sounds like the french trying to say they're better than everyone else by doing some totally different interpretation of something - again. And whoever said that this is the "original" tempo. I'm gunna need proof supporting that claim.

[ptourist]

The slower pace of this song is correct, which is how it was performed for the original Broadway production and in subsequent productions that follow the original staging. Several changes to the score were made for the original Broadway cast recording, including speeding up the pace of this song -- which surprised me when I saw this show for the first time, the 1977 Broadway revival. In Jacques Brel's french recording, the original pace of this song is preserved.

[01dieener]

im related

[rockgor]

The movie was a big disappointment. Might

have helped to use the Broadway cast.

[mitch26]

Shame there's no video of this....

[bazil494]

Really nice. thank you.

[pgrigg]

She is amazing. I have the English Broadway version, and she's wonderful. She was also in Kismet on Broadway, and her "Not Since Nineveh" always gives me the chills. This is very interesting, done so slowly. she has an amazing ability to have her voice sound beautiful, and then switch to harsh. I love that this is on youtube.