Based on Gaston Leroux’s horror novel, The Phantom of the Opera tells the enticing story of a disfigured Phantom who haunts the depths of The Paris Opera House. Mesmerized by the talents and beauty of the young soprano Christine, The Phantom lures her as his protégé and falls fiercely in love with her. The Phantom's obsession sets the scene for a dramatic turn of events where jealousy, madness and passions collide. Audiences are in for a thrilling night of spectacle and romance, accompanied by Broadway’s most unforgettable score by Andrew Lloyd Webber, including "Music of the Night," "All I Ask of You," and "Masquerade." Directed by the late Harold Prince and produced by Cameron Mackintosh and The Really Useful Group, the musical opened on Broadway on January 26, 1988. It won seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical, and became the longest-running show in Broadway history on January 9, 2006.
In the end, The Phantom of the Opera can be no more than the sum of its pictorial effects. It's no opera (not with those bland melodies, not with lyric phrases like 'Be My Guest' and 'Make My Night'), it's not a display case of serious acting, it's not humor (not even self-mockery). It's pyschologically lightweight, long on melodramatic grotesquerie, and it can only on its visual chills. Will three chills, plus candles that swarm like fireflies, do you?
Technically it is a piece of impeccably crafted musical theater, with theme, music and staging in perfect accord. They combine as a total statement that depends for its potency more on the sum of its parts than on the strength of any individual component.
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