In 1968, Alain Boublil was working as a music publisher, while also writing lyrics for pop songs. One day, he heard a song on his car radio by a young French singer called Patricia, which caught his attention.
Alain Boulil and Claude-Michel Schönberg. Photo © Michael Wharley.
“There was something about the song that appealed to me,” he tells Limelight.
In what turned out to be a fateful moment, he called the radio station to find out who wrote it and was put in touch with Claude-Michel Schönberg. The two of them met and got on famously.
“The thing that was obvious was our common aspiration to tell a story through words and music,” says Boublil.
Schönberg concurs. “After talking and talking, I realised how much he was in love with musicals and I told him [about] my passion for operas, both of us being fed up [with] writing pop song after pop song.”
Schönberg had loved opera since he was a child and knew several by heart, including Madama Butterfly, which the pair would later reimagine for their musical
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