Songs from The Pirate Queen

You see, I love musicals. So I'm always on the lookout for a new one that I might like. Of course, not living in a city like New York, I don't always catch up as quickly as I otherwise might, but I like to think that even if I'm a couple years behind in discovering a show, that's still pretty good.

Case in point: The Pirate Queen, c. 2007.

I've been casually researching this one ever since I discovered Stephanie J. Block's new album "The Place I Know," which includes a song I had never heard before but now love: "Because I am a Wife" from Alain Boubil and Claude-Michel Schonberg's The Pirate Queen. (Broadway fans of course will of course recognize this famous writing duo as the creators of both Les Miserables and Miss Saigon.)

And yet my research had led to a disheartening end. Not only did the show end quickly after a short and disappointing run on Broadway, but when the show had moved from Chicago to New York months earlier, it lost this very wonderful song that I had so recently discovered. Its replacement ("Woman") is also quite nice, but to me it lacked the power of "Because I am a Wife."

Why, I wonder, would they make such a change? Is it because in reworking the story, the song no longer fit with the plot, as was the case with Alan Mencken and Howard Ashman's "Proud of Your Boy," which was cut from the Disney film Aladdin?

Or was "Woman" truly deemed the better song?

What do you think? Or does anyone know for sure?