Now her new work is being presented to the theatre-going public again; and again the most widely used comment, overheard in the lobby, is: “The music is very beautiful!” The score includes an overture, 22 songs, and more than a dozen of other musical compositions (such as dance numbers). The versatile score of the musical, represented by classic arias (“Oh, Heavens, Have Mercy upon Jeannette!” “Prayer”, “Oh, Death, How Dark My Soul Is!”) as well as tavern songs (“Come to a Tavern!”, “Scholars’ Song ”, “Let Wine Be Shed!”), a romance (“Isabeau’s Romance”), a minuet (sung by Villon and Isabeau), lyrical rock-ballades (“Return to Paris”, “Where Are You?”, “Welcome to Villon”, “Verses”, “The Poet Is Immortal”), compositions with elements of rock (“Authority”, “Revenge”, “I Want to Save Villon”), fiery melodies for crowd-scenes, and rude rhythms of street scuffles, seems to be, nevertheless, quite a holistic one. Vocal and dance numbers correspond to the deploying plot and promote its deployment.

Undeniable hits of the musical are such compositions as “Prayer”, “Verses”, “The Poet, He’s a Flibbertigibbet”, and “Scholars’ Song”. When speaking of musical aesthetics, one cannot help hailing “Princesse” and “Where Are You?” pieces, in which ones, in addition to extremely beautiful melodies, remaining in one's memory for ever, one can also hear Villon’s original texts in Old French, which circumstance inevitably helps the audience to get absorbed with the atmosphere of events, taking place in Paris of XV century.

When writing lyrics for songs of the musical, Lisa in a number of them used to insert lines and fragments from poems by Villon. Thus, in song “Welcome to Villon” she used lines from his poem “Ballade des femmes de Paris”, translated into Russian by F. Mendelson , and in “Scholars’ Song” she used lines from Villon’s poem “Ballade de bonne doctrine à ceux de mauvaise” translated by Y. Korenev, and her song “Oh, Death, How Dark My Soul Is!” consists of three poems by Villon, taken from his “Le grand testament” (translated also by F. Mendelson: “Rondo”, and two others).

“I would not have taken a responsibility of writing lyrics for this musical myself,” - said Lisa Monde in her interview just before the first showing. – “I do understand that any verse written to the music would never match any verse written by Villon himself and used for some numbers, and because of such vicinity they could seem to sound even more ‘primitive’ than they actually are. Lyrics, written to some existing music, and poems, to which ones music is written, can differ in quality very much. In the one case melody follows the music of poetry, and the task of the composer is to feel the inner music of verse, heard by the poet, and just put it down, while in the other case writing verse to some music is a kind of puzzling out: you just look for and use some mosaic fragments, corresponding to music already written. Any resemblance of them to any verse, written by anyone in the past or in the present, is absolutely impossible. American composer Arthur Schwarz thought lyrics to be just an appendix to rhythms and accents of the musical material, highly constraining the lyricist.

However, I had to write some of the lyrics myself, just for the lack of time, and I think I’ve succeeded in one or two songs, or even more. They are: “Verses”, “Return to Paris”, “Prayer”, and “Come to a Tavern!” In other cases I am not fully satisfied with my work of a lyricist. Maybe, later, in a quieter atmosphere, I will improve them. I also think that such texts as those of songs “Revenge” and “Authority” may incur some kind of ‘reproach’. Thus, in the first song every two first lines of a stanza should finish with one-syllable words, as it is demanded by the rhythmic character of the melody.”

Events, on which the libretto (written by A. Linnikova) of the musical is based, are not established facts. However they are events that could have happened.

Fransois Villon, a poet, exiled from Paris for robbery, secretly returns to the French capital – just for three days – to take his girlfriend Isabeau with him, to see his former friend Margot, as well as his university companions, and to take back his poems, left with Loran, his most true follower. However, during his long stay away from Paris some changes took place. Pierre Bezanier, a former Villon’s camarade de cours, had not only become an all-mighty King's Prosecutor, but also Isabeau’s suitor, scheming to make her become his wife. Loran, fearing of disclosing his friendship with exiled Villon, betrays him, and thus Villon gets to prison again. However Janet, Bezanier’s niece, is a passionate admirer of Villon’s talent. For the sake of love to his wonderful poems as well as to his friend she helps him to break away. At the height of fighting with warders Villon’s friends come to help him (including Laurent, repenting of his betrayal). The end of the musical is a happy one: the King’s Prosecutor is beaten and ridiculed, Laurent repents of his sins and is forgiven, Villon and Isabeau can freely leave Paris, and Janet can freely love his friend, now her best beloved. Margot stops being jealous, having understood that Villon and Isabeau truly love each other.

Alas, we cannot get acquainted with the scenario, as it has not been published on the site of the theatre, yet. So, it is not clear, weather it lacks well written plotline for supporting roles, or it is a specific director’s vision, that relations between supporting personages should be unclear for the audience, and we should only guess what really connects Margot and Laurent, or why Margot’s initial negative attitude towards Isabeau changes to a diametrically opposite one. If Laurent did not have financial motive to betray Villon, then why did he do that, actually? (Having got money for his betrayal, he immediately throws it away.)

The most unaccountable (and unjustified) is the change of character and image of the King’s Prosecutor, a powerful, tough, and hard-hearted man, who in the final of the musical starts resembling a whimpering Kaschey Bessmertnyi from a popular Russian fairy-tale: “I am very kind and surely not greedy! People, why don’t you like me?!” We have just not understood yet, whose inventiveness and resourcefulness is this, a script writer’s or a director’s one. However, we would like to hope that this folly could be removed when elaborating the performance.

We would also like to dwell upon the actors’ performance as well. In Russian musicals, due to the lack of professionally trained artists of the genre, some number of both singing dramatic artists (who not always sing well) and professional vocalists (having a rather inadequate actor’s training, if any) are usually present on the scene at the same time. That is why the main aim of the director is to arrange the company so, that such diversity of training would not be seen by the audience. It should be said that in this production the relation of ‘singers’ to ‘actors’ is about fifty-fifty. The dramatic actors seem to have been ‘imbibing’ the musical for a long time, while the vocalists do equally well as actors, so that a not-well-informed spectator would not determine who is an actor, and who is a vocalist. However, some of them (L. Mond, O. Vorozhtsova) just sing better than others, while some others (I. Bondarenko, S. Ushakov) play somehow better. The last two of them, while performing their parts, managed to create the most vivid and the most attractive images, correspondingly, while L. Mond managed to create a most complete and integrated one of Isabeau.

The crowd scenes are o.k.: the location of corps de ballet on the stage, its movements, its plastics and just poses are very organic and appropriate, being not an addition to the performance, but an integral part of it. This seems to be a common achievement of the director and the choreographer.

The scenery, costumes, video and trick effects, all well done, serve, undoubtedly, to the benefit of the staging. In every scene the audience understands well where the action takes place: in the street, or in Margot’s tavern, or in Châtelet, where the King’s Prosecutor rules, or in the church. The scenery is very functional, having a form of gothic pilasters, giving the scene a likeness of an ancient cathedral. The pilasters can also be lifted and lowered to become a scaffold, or a table, or a wall.

It should be kept in mind, that the production of the Teatralnyi Tsentr Art Voyazh Theatre is a repertory one, and it does not have any sponsor’s support (that is why it cannot be compared with such projects as “The Count of Monte Cristo”, a musical by Alexandr Tumencev (composer) and Tatyana Ziryanova (russian lyrics), or even an enterprise staging of “Mata Hari”, so we should give due respect to the administration of the theatre, having dared to invest into this musical. The absence of playbills and posters in the streets of Moscow allows the audience to be composed of those who are true supporters of the genre, as well as those who have heard from their friends and neighbours about ‘a musical that surely must be seen’.

This project seems to have a historic mission: to convince Muscovites that a musical is not necessarily an exclusive, expensive and fashionable show, to which people go to boast afterwards that they managed to see it, having paid load of money. It is not so at all. A musical can just be a beautiful show, pleasant for one’s ear and eye, a ticket to which can be booked even by a student.