Bernadette, The Musical

The French Musical Phenomenon, Now American!

Lourdes, south of France, 1858.

Bernadette is fourteen years old…or maybe thirteen. She is not too sure.

She is young, too poor to go to school, and sick. It makes it easy to dismiss her. She returns from a grim grotto on the river bank, saying she saw something – or someone – she called “Aquero” in the local dialect. She tells only her friends and siblings, but the news spreads like wildfire through the small town. Questions follow. Doubt hardens. She is only a child. Surely she is mistaken. Surely she is lying. Surely she is dreaming.

She is questioned first by her parents, then by neighbors and passers-by, by the parish priest Father Peyramale, and finally by Police Commissioner Jacomet, who is determined to prove the girl wrong. All search for a flaw, a contradiction, a reason to put an end to the turmoil and move on.

Bernadette does not try to explain what she saw, what she heard and what she felt. She doesn’t try to convince, but stands her ground, unafraid and steadfast. “I fear nothing, for I have always told the truth. I was asked to tell you, not to convince you.”

The crowds swell. So does the tension. Believers hope. Sceptics mock. Is she telling the truth? Is she lying? The authorities grow uneasy and want to stop the thousands now flocking to the grotto. At the center of it all stands a girl who never asked to be there.

Her quiet but unyielding steadfastness unsettles everyone. From her simple testimony something far greater grows: crowds, conflict, belief, fear; until the story no longer belongs to her alone, shaping a town, moving a people, and drawing millions to Lourdes each year, in search of healing, truth, and hope