Minor Question About a Random Song Lyric in "Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812"- Page 2

[themysteriousgrowl]

Posted: 1/8/16 at 5:49pm

 

It's such a shame to marry squirrels in the country.

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 1/9/16 at 8:41am

Newintown, the question is not how contemporary Russian speaking Russians pronounce Moscow but how early 19th century primarily French speaking Russian elites would.  Perhaps they might say Moscou (mo-sku) as the French do.  (I hav no idea btw how it was said in the Boston production)

And as for it not being difficult to say the city's name as it's said in Russian, it's certainly not difficult to say Roma or Pari(silent s) in English, but we don't. 

[aimeric]

Posted: 5/10/16 at 9:49pm

It's funny, I hadn't given another thought to this lyric since this discussion on here, but just today I discovered that Dave Malloy himself has published online annotations for all of his lyrics from "Natasha, Pierre."  For this lyric in "Charming," see here: https://genius.com/9130179 

 

And the big answer to our question is......Yes, it's just a result of Dave Malloy's bad French, combined with composer's stubbornness, and then only later did he try to spin it into a character trait.  

 

[gypsy101]

Posted: 5/26/18 at 6:46pm

pulling this thread out of the depths of obscurity simply because i’ve been into this musical a lot the last month or so and i can’t help but thinking the point of her mispronouncing “charmante” would have been funnier if in her other french line during this song ("Alliez dans le monde plutôt que de dépérir d'ennui!”) she had really made a show of pronouncing all the z’s and t’s and s’s and hard r’s, and just made it a mangled mess, showing how truly uneducated she is.

[Fan123]

Posted: 5/27/18 at 12:28am

FWIW, I actually think Amber Grey does sing that other line with a worse accent (and therefore, more in character) on the Broadway cast recording compared to the original recording. But I know virtually no French so might be misjudging that.