This page is for tropes that have appeared in the musical Les Misérables.
For the rest:
- Massive Multiplayer Ensemble Number: "One Day More". Every Parisian character gets a verse about what the next day will bring, all anchored by Valjean intoning "One Day More;" Fantine is even there in spirit because the music reprises "I Dreamed a Dream."
- Meaningful Echo: There are abundant examples in the music alone, but one example in the lyrics runs so: in the Prologue, the Bishop of Digne blesses the policemen who arrested Valjean, saying "I commend you for your duty." An act and a half later, when Valjean sets Javert free, he says, "There's nothing that I blame you for... you've done your duty, nothing more."
- Valjean sang about "the cry in the dark that nobody hears" in his soliloquy. When Patron Minette tries breaking into his house, Cosette's (actually Eponine's) scream drives then away and again he sings he heard a "cry in the dark".
- Meaningful Name: Many, many, many…
- Fantine from “enfantine”, childish
- Marius after Victor Hugo’s own middle name, Marie
- Montparnasse is named after the quarter of Paris he operates in
- Jean Valjean's name literally means "John's as good as any other John."
- Valjean’s alias of Monsieur Madeleine, chosen after Mary of Magdala (Marie-Madeleine in French), the repentant sinner
- The Bishop lives in Digne, and he treats Valjean with dignity.
- Mirror Character: Valjean and Javert, from the consonants in their names onward. In "The Confrontation" they both sneer at each other for "knowing nothing of" one another's lives, and Javert reveals he also grew up in poverty; later, Javert's final song echoes the tune and several lines of Valjean's That Man Is Dead declaration in "What Have I Done."
- Money Song:
- All of the Thenardier's songs.
- "Lovely Ladies" shows making money is the ultimate object of prostitution.
- Mood Whiplash: Mostly in a lot of cast recordings where the reprise of "A Heart Full of Love" is cut, but it goes from the long, dark, depressing line of songs starting from "Dog Eats Dog" to "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables" to a triumphant wedding chorale and "Beggar at the Feast". It's incredibly jarring.
- More Expendable Than You: The rebels try to keep Gavroche away from the line of fire since he literally is a child compared to them, and they say his life is more valuable. He doesn't listen.
- Musicalus Interruptus:
- The song of the police who arrest Valjean in the prologue ends abruptly when the bishop backs up his alibi.
- The students' activities at the cafe halt when Gavroche tells them Gen. Lamarque is dead.
- A rare non-comedic example at the end of “A Little Fall of Rain”. Éponine dies and Marius has to sing the last word for her.
- Must Make Amends: Valjean constantly. It's his thing.
- Multiple Demographic Appeal: Hot men! Gorgeous women! Incredible music! A glorious revolution! Death! Bloodshed! Humor! This show has everything.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Valjean after his encounter with the bishop. The song is even named “What Have I Done?” (and continues with “Sweet Jesus, what have I done?”)
- He gets another one when Fantine reveals that blowing off her fight in his factory led to severe repercussions.
- Marius, depending on the production, has a smaller one when he discovers the man he sent away is the man who saved his life.
- Mystery Meat: The Thenardiers' inn serves up some rather bizarre delicacies.Kidney of a horse
Liver of a cat
Filling up the sausages with this and that! - Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Thénardier goes to Marius to blackmail him with his knowledge about Valjean, but ends up telling Marius that Valjean saved Marius from the barricade (although Thénardier believed him to have killed Marius to rob him). Although Marius and Cosette arrive too late to save Valjean, he dies with Cosette at his side and the knowledge that the two know that he was not a bad man.
- No Name Given: Enjolras's name is actually never spoken in libretto throughout the entire musical due to pronunciation issues. Though beginning the ABC Cafe scene with an exclaimed "Enjolras!" has become a pretty regular ad-lib, nowadays.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Where to start, poor Jean Valjean.
- Not in This for Your Revolution: Among the friends of the ABC, Grantaire is an absolute cynic and doesn't give a damn about the revolutionary ideals of his friends, and according to the source material, is really only there because he idolizes and/or loves Enjolras. Later on, Valjean joins up, but he's just there to save his daughter’s lover.
- Oblivious to Love: Marius to Éponine throughout the musical. He thanks her as a "friend" for bringing him to Cosette, despite her obvious feelings for him, and asks the devoted Éponine to deliver a love letter to Cosette in his name. However, this trope is thankfully subverted in their final scene together.
- Obsession Song: Celia Keenan-Bolger's
"On My Own" is portrayed this way. - Official Couple: Marius and Cosette.
- Offscreen Inertia: Responsible for giving the impression that Javert does nothing but stalk Valjean after he breaks parole, or that Valjean does nothing but hide from Javert; originally their continued meetings are coincidence, but Valjean is branded with his prisoner number(s) and Javert hasn't forgotten the strongest man he'd ever met. Not helped by the scene in Paris where Javert asks (rhetorically) "Could he be the man I've hunted? / Could it be he's Jean Valjean?"
- One Name Only: Inspector Javert, Fantine, both Thénardiers, all of the students minus Je(h)an Prouvaire and Marius, the bishop, Fauchelevent, Bamatabois…
- Pair the Spares: Many fanfic writers seem to think that Éponine and Enjolras should be paired, on the basis that they are both single. Unless they choose to play off the legendary
Ho Yay between Enjolras and Grantaire. - Paper-Thin Disguise: Javert when he tries to spy on the Amis of the ABC. That is, until he is exposed by Gavroche.
- Parental Abandonment:
- Cosette, after her father leaves her mother and Fantine has to leave her with the Thénardiers
- The original version of the musical still features Marius’ grandfather, who, after the death of his daughter, forced Marius’ father to give the child to him. Marius finds out rather late that his father did not abandon him voluntarily.
- In a case of All There in the Manual, Gavroche is actually one of the Thenardier's sons who was essentially abandoned and forced to become a street urchin. While it's not ever explicitly mentioned in the show, some adaptations play this up by having Gavroche especially grief-stricken at Eponine's death.
- Parental Favoritism: The Thénardiers spoil their own daughter, Éponine, while treating Cosette no better than a slave.
- Plot Parallel: "Valjean's Soliloquy" and "Javert's Soliloquy" both deal with a man who has just been recipient to a surprise act of mercy. Valjean has just had the priest who he robbed cover for him; Javert has just been spared by Valjean. Both men experience this sudden mercy as a personal crisis. To really underscore this point, the two songs are Reprise Medleys, and the lyrics are full of Meaningful Echos — what did they "allow this man" in this caught off guard moment, what "does he know", how this man gave him his freedom. The final verse is about half overlapping, centered around a declaration that "I'll escape now from that world." For Valjean, this means reinventing himself and starting a new life. For Javert, this means suicide.
- Plucky Comic Relief: The Thénardiers, in a stark contrast to the novel.
- Primal Fear: Little Cosette is afraid of the dark forest.
- Prison: Where the very first song is set.
- Pun: Victor Hugo is well known for his puns. "Les Amis de l'ABC" is one of them: the French pronunciation makes you read "ABC" as "Abaissé", "abased", thus making them "The Friends of the Downtrodden".
- Punctuated! For! Emphasis!
- One more dawn! One more day! ONE! DAY! MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!!!!!
- Both Colm Wilkinson and Gary Morris tended to deliver their lines in this way: "MY NAME IS JEAN! VAL! JEAN!"
- TWO! FOUR! SIX! OH! OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONE!
- Quarreling Song: All of Valjean and Javert's duets.
- Race Lift: It gets funny when actresses of different races play child and adult Cosette or Éponine. Or when the parents’ race doesn’t fit that of the daughter (Fantine to Cosette, or the Thernardiers to Éponine)…
- Rags to Riches: Valjean as M Madeleine. Considering his costumes, even literally…
- Rain Aura: This is simulated using a fog machine for the song "On My Own", in which Eponine sings about how the rain makes the pavement look like silver.
- Redemption Equals Death: Definitely for Javert, not quite as much for Valjean
- Red Light District: At least some interpretations of the show set Lovely Ladies in this area of Montreuil-sur-Mer. Others call it the Docks but imply the same thing.
- Relationship Compression: Marius and Cosette.
- Reprise Medley: "One Day More" and "Epilogue".
- The Revolution Will Not Be Vilified: The Friends of the ABC are portrayed as heroic defenders of the common man.
- Rule of Drama: Why the circumstances of Fantine's firing was changed from the book. There, she got fired because of a random background check. In the musical she gets into a fight with a coworker who discovered she had a child.
