'I Dreamed a Dream' is a good example - the French text used in the Mackintosh production when it played in Paris and Montreal is a great deal less, well, *generic* than Kretzmer's English lyric, and very little of it is a direct translation:
J'avais rêvé d'une autre vie
Quand ma vie passait
Comme un rêve.
J'étais prête
À toutes les folies,
À toutes les passions
Qui se lèvent.
J'étais si jeune, où est le mal?
Je voulais rire,
Aimer et vivre,
Danser jusqu'à la fin du bal,
Ivre du bonheur d'être libre.
Mais les loups rôdent dans la nuit;
Et l'un d'eux flairait ma trace.
Moi, j'ai comblé l'appétit
Du premier voleur qui passe.
Il a accoutumé ma vie
À la chaleur de sa présence.
Et puis un jour il est parti
En m'ayant volé mon enfance.
Parfois je rêve de lui encore:
Il me supplie et il regrette.
Mais le rêve s'éteint à l'aurore,
Comme les lampions d'un soir de fête.
J'avais rêvé d'une autre vie.
À peine commencée elle s'achève.
J'avais rêvé d'une autre vie,
Mais la vie a tué
Mes rêves.
Rough translation:
I had dreamed of another life
When life passed like a dream
I was ready for all the madness (= folly, follies of youth)
For all the passions that could take me.
I was so young, where's the harm?
I wanted to love, to laugh, to live,
To dance until the end of the ball,
Drunk on the joy of being free.
But the wolves roam at night,
And one of them caught my scent.
Me, I satisfied the appetite
Of the first thief who passed.
I became accustomed to living
In the heat of his presence,
But then one day he was gone,
Having stolen my childhood.
Sometimes I still dream of him,
He begs me, and he's sorry,
But the dream fades at the dawn,
Like the lanterns at a summer party.
I had dreamed of another life,
Hardly begun, it's come to an end.
I had dreamed of another life,
But life has killed my dreams.
As a character monologue, to me, that's far more interesting than Kretzmer's version, which is dreary.
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