The musical "Beauty and the Beast," which opens at Atwood
Concert Hall on Thursday, has a distinguished pedigree.
Brilliant composers, directors and writers have been drawn to
the fable. The Disney film on which the musical is based was the
first animated movie to receive an Academy Award nomination for
best picture. Yet few artists associated with "Beauty and the
Beast" are as interesting -- and unknown -- as Jeanne Marie
Leprince de Beaumont (various spellings can be found), the woman
who gave us the most familiar version of the story. Though the
plot type appears in ancient folklore (both the Nordic "East of
the Sun and West of the Moon" and the Alaska Native "Woman Who
Married a Bear" are variants) and others published accounts
before hers, Beaumont's "Beauty" is the one we know. It has made
her the most-read female author of the 18th century and remains
so famous that she's regularly credited with creating the whole
fairy tale from scratch. Yet, in a sense, she did. Belle, the
"Beauty," is different from