The musical begins as the bells of Notre Dame sound through the famed cathedral in fifteenth-century Paris. Quasimodo, the eponymous bell-ringer who longs to be “Out There,” observes all of Paris reveling in the Feast of Fools. Held captive by his misguided caretaker, the archdeacon Dom Claude Frollo, he escapes for the day and joins the boisterous crowd, only to be treated cruelly by all but the beautiful Romani woman Esmeralda. As Frollo vows to destroy the Roma, Quasimodo, cathedral guard Captain Phoebus, and all of Paris are swept into events that will change them forever.