Les Miserables

I will never forget when my high school musical did a production of Les Miserables and my Mom came home from the PTA meeting and asked if I knew how to pronounce it. She said that the student at the PTA meeting had no idea how to say it correctly. Luckily I passed the test since I had seen it on Broadway. The reason I mention this story is because I thought it was funny that in Latvian the letter s is pronounced in Les Miserables which is the way uneducated people in the US pronounce it.

So on Saturday I went to see the Latvian production of my favorite musical. It was very good even though some of the songs were a little off because it took longer to say things in Latvian. Also the symbolism between the musical and Latvia didn't hit me until I saw the barricades.
(I stole this from Wikipedia) In January of 1991 Latvia, which had declared independence from the Soviet Union the previous year, was attacked by pro-soviet forces, most notably the OMON (Soviet special forces). Events that took place January 13-27, 1991 are known as "The Barricades" because of barricades built for defense of strategic objects. At least 7 people were killed, and in total 15,611 people have registered themselves as participants of the Barricades.

I think this really shows just how nationalistic Latvia can be..staged during any other time of the year it would have been different but staging this production during January evokes Latvian nationalist sentiment at its very core.