Fantine has tuberculosis?

[ILOHTFAHA (Aida Man)]

Posted: 4/7/12 at 10:14pm

Because US magazine says she does

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 4/7/12 at 10:16pm

Yes

[blaxx]

Posted: 4/7/12 at 10:17pm

No, it is because she eats 2 apples a day and a protein shake. Duh.

[ILOHTFAHA (Aida Man)]

Posted: 4/7/12 at 10:21pm

ok

[blaxx]

Posted: 4/7/12 at 10:21pm

You're welcome.

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 4/7/12 at 10:22pm

What's amazing is how tuberculosis victims are able to sing power ballads!

[ILOHTFAHA (Aida Man)]

Posted: 4/7/12 at 10:23pm

As she dies of consumption...

musical's Description

[blaxx]

Posted: 4/7/12 at 10:24pm

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.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 4/7/12 at 10:25pm

Consumption is tuberculosis.

[best12bars]

Posted: 4/7/12 at 10:28pm

Also known as the "opera disease."

Everybody dies from singing the same song.

All joking aside, Tuberculosis (aka "consumption") was a horrible disease that was extremely contagious. My grandfather died of it.

(Although I don't think he sang that song first.)

[blaxx]

Posted: 4/7/12 at 10:29pm

Doesn't Mimi die from this too?

I mean the Mimi from the good show, not the bad one.

[best12bars]

Posted: 4/7/12 at 10:30pm

Yep.
Tuberculosis in popular culture

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 4/7/12 at 10:33pm

Women were popularly believed to be radiantly beautiful when dying of consumption.

[broadwaydevil]

Posted: 4/7/12 at 10:41pm

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.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 4/7/12 at 10:41pm

It's because they got so thin!

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 4/7/12 at 10:43pm

"Dammit! That coulda' been my 14th step to the Right Side of 40!" -- The Late Bob Bergeron

[best12bars]

Posted: 4/7/12 at 10:44pm

Actually that "radiant" look in their eyes was a starving need for oxygen.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 4/7/12 at 10:58pm

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.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 4/7/12 at 11:37pm

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!"

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 4/8/12 at 12:37am

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.

[JoanBennett]

Posted: 4/8/12 at 12:48am

when Nicole Kidman. had it, she could lip-sync AND do trapeze!

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 4/8/12 at 9:07am

in other news:

Diana was mentally ill?

Nancy was slain?

Aldonza was raped?

Jenny never made up her mind?

Anita wants you to shut up and get gone?

Queenie was a blonde and her age stood still and she danced twice a day in the vaudeville?

Martha's husband played the violin and tucked it right under his chin?

Eliza wanted a room somewhere far away from the cold night air with one enormous chair?

Georgina wants to share the floor and the door and the bed and the chair and her own morning?

Sally was born on a thousand acres of Oklahoma land?

Another Sally made her mind up back in Chelsea?

And another one should have worn green because she wore green the last time, the time she was happy?

And yet another has a new philosophy?

DuBarry was a Lady?

Reno was the top?







Updated On: 4/8/12 at 09:07 AM

[best12bars]

Posted: 4/8/12 at 9:49am

Yes, but did they look radiant?

[CONAries]

Posted: 4/8/12 at 10:24am

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!

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 4/8/12 at 10:36am

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]

TB