The English-language version, with a revised book by Peter Parnell, had its debut at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, California on October 28, 2014, and ran until December 7, 2014.

[3] The musical is notably darker and thematically closer to the source material than the animated film, with composer Alan Menken and lyricist Stephen Schwartz repurposing and rewriting several songs to match the original tone of the Hugo novel.

For a long time, Berlin Theatre (now Theater am Potsdamer Platz) was in talks to stage The Lion King, but after those negotiations fell through, Disney offered The Hunchback of Notre Dame instead.

[5] This project, announced by Stella Entertainment on March 18, 1998, saw the stage musical-producing market leader of Germany depart from its tradition of only importing shows which had proven to be successful on Broadway.

As with Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King, Der Glöckner Von Notre Dame opened three years after the release of the movie on which it is based.

The musical was not staged again in this format for many years, however adaptations of the 1996 film The Hunchback of Notre Dame could be seen in various productions around Disney theme parks and cruises.

[21] The Hunchback of Notre Dame had a workshop in February 2014, and its North American premiere at La Jolla Playhouse on October 28, 2014, and ran through December 7, 2014, directed by Scott Schwartz.

[23] The La Jolla Playhouse production transferred to the Paper Mill Playhouse with the 19 person core cast with three new cast members Jeremy Stolle[usurped], Dashaun Young, and Joseph J. Simeone, (replacing San Diego locals Brian Smolin, William Thomas Hodgson, and Lucas Coleman respectively) with a new choir local to New Jersey, the Continuo Arts Symphonic Chorus from March 4 through April 5, 2015,[24][25] after which it was announced the show would not move to Broadway, but it was never officially planned to transfer.

[26] In December 2017 the show finally got its New York debut with its NY Regional Premiere at the White Plains Performing Arts Center and opened to outstanding reviews.

[34] The show was performed for the first time in the UK at The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama by the Richard Burton Company in 2019, directed by Graham Gill.

[39][40] Due to union restrictions regarding the inclusion of the choir and the profitability for Disney from licensing to local productions, the musical has never been staged on Broadway, which has garnered some criticism.

As the festival begins ("Drunter drüber" – "Topsy Turvy"), Quasimodo attends it and he is celebrated for his bizarre appearance, only to be humiliated by the crowd after Frollo's men start a riot.

Esmeralda finds and befriends Quasimodo to the bell tower and is captivated by the view of the city ("Hoch über der Welt" – "On Top of the World").

Meanwhile, Frollo soon develops lustful feelings for Esmeralda and, upon realizing them, he begs the Virgin Mary to save him from her "spell" to avoid eternal damnation ("Das Feuer der Hölle" – "Hellfire").

Meanwhile, the gargoyles convince Quasimodo that Esmeralda finds him romantically intriguing, and they reassure him about her safety ("Ein Mann wie du" – "A Guy Like You").

Tied up in the bell tower, Quasimodo refuses to help and tells the gargoyles to leave him ("Wie aus Stein" – "Made of Stone").

In the present day (in the year 1542), Quasimodo is now a young man, made partially deaf by a lifetime of ringing Notre Dame's bells.

The gypsies prepare to leave; Phoebus asks Esmeralda to go with her, the two expressing their love for each other as Quasimodo looks on, heartbroken ("Heaven's Light (Reprise)/In a Place of Miracles").

The actor playing Quasimodo breaks character and addresses the audience, explaining that years later, two skeletons were discovered in the crypts of Notre Dame, one holding the other in its arms.

He relies on a form of sign language that he has invented, and while he is unable to articulate, the statues of Notre Dame serve as figments of his imagination, which provide insight into his thoughts and attitudes as a Greek chorus.

Thomas Schumacher, president of the Walt Disney Theatrical, noted that the English adaption of the musical embraced the darker elements of the original source material by Victor Hugo.

[53] The ending was proposed by director Scott Schwartz, who turned to the original source material for inspiration; it was inserted during tech rehearsals for the Papermill staging.

[55][56] Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz felt that having a live choir on stage was integral in achieving the full-bodied sound they had crafted for the film; in addition James Lapine gave them his blessing in tinkering with his book for the new production.

Der Glöckner von Notre Dame Matt Wolf of Variety said, "The prevailing tone, indeed, is far and away the most somber of the three Disney film-to-stage shows yet."

He wrote that "the design is likely to be the show's talking point in any language, coupling as it does the best of British and American talent with a new $100 million dollar-plus playhouse specifically adapted to accommodate the demands of the piece.

The aquamarine stage curtain, Gothic tracery already encoded within it, rises to reveal set designer Heidi Ettinger's ever-shifting array of cubes that join with Jerome Sirlin's projections to conjure the medieval world of the Parisian belltower inhabited by Sarich's misshapen orphan Quasimodo, his unyielding master Frollo (Norbert Lamla) and a trio of very chatty gargoyles.

The New York Daily News wrote, "This stage musical smartly excises comic relief from the film's giggling gargoyles...The look of the show is also very good.

Alexander Dodge's lavish bell-tower, Alejo Vietti's gritty period costumes and Howell Binkley's dynamic lights lend to the atmosphere.

"[57] The New York Times deemed it a "surprising[ly] self-serious...polished but ponderous musical" with a "simultaneously impressive and oppressive" stage and "rich choral singing.

[83] M1 Musical wrote that from the first notes of Olim in the German recording, the reviewer was given goosebumps; they ultimately deemed it a "masterpiece – the diamond in the CD shelf.