The bigger issue isn't the cluttering of /. , but the cluttering of higher education. What skill is this teaching? How will it help prepare students for the work place? I do not see these answers; I hope they have been thought about.

Les Miserables is a musical, not a play. The music is vital for setting the mood of the piece. Each character has his or her own motif which lets gives you insight into the characters. For Wagner, this was almost more important for character development than the libretto (lyrics) itself. When I go to a musical, I pay for the best seats so I can sit close to the pit. I want to see the conductor carefully watching the actors on stage and communicating with the musicians so that everything stays together. It is truly an amazing thing to see a large group of people perform together in sync.

When I was in high school, I got to see a touring company of Les Miserables. One of the parts I looked forward to seeing the most was after the barricades fall and Jean Valjean looks through the bodies for Marius. There is a huge oboe solo that plays the melody to Jean Valjean's song, "Bring Him Home." This music conveys to the audience that although Jean Valjean knows he will lose his daughter to Marius by saving him, he knows that is what he should do. As an oboe student, I listened carefully how the musician interpreted the solo. It was a rare opportunity for me to get to hear someone else besides my teachers, and a machine simply would not have been the same.

Once in college as a music major, I got to experience the musicians' union's pettiness. Many times we had to sit in rehearsal for several minutes not allowed to rehearse because our morning rehearsal had gone over several minutes and the union members' lunch break had to be exactly sixty minutes. However when it came time to play, people would get over their egos and make music. (Musicians have always been difficult to deal with - Bach stabbed a bassoonist and Handel tried to throw a soprano out a window!).

Next month, my elementary school music students are going to get a great opportunity. The Nashville Opera company is travelling to our rural mining town and performing The Barber of Seville. The school had a choice whether to watch the performance on a live internet broadcast or have a scaled down version of the opera travel to the school. We chose to have the opera come to the school because seeing it live will engage the students better and just be more exciting for them. The children are prettty pumped about it, too.

It saddens me to think that Les Mis has to move to a smaller theater because of declining ticket sales. Perhaps it would be better to let it close with a little dignity instead of letting go on forever like Cats. But Cameron Macintosh was responsible for Cats lingering on forever too!