PHOTO FLASH: THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA's Rachel Eskenazi-Gold Makes Her 5th Grade Dream Come True

It's great to be talented and it helps to lucky, but sometimes confidence is the key. Judging from what she wrote in her 5th grade yearbook, Rachel Eskenazi-Gold has the confidence part covered.

This past Wednesday night, the young actor who only last year graduated from the University of Michigan with a B.F.A. in Musical Theatre, stepped up from the ensemble to become the 41st performer to play the starring role of Christine Daaé in Broadway's The Phantom of the Opera.

She knew it would happen all along...

Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera, directed by Harold Prince and produced by Cameron Mackintosh and The Really Useful Theatre Company, Inc., is the longest-running show in Broadway history. The New York production has played an unheard-of 27 years and well over 11,000 performances to 16 million people - and continues to play with no end in sight. (By way of comparison, the second longest-running show, Chicago, remains a distant second at 18 years and 7,500 performances.) PHANTOM's astounding longevity is unprecedented.

Based on the classic novel Le Fantôme de L'Opéra by Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera tells the story of a masked figure who lurks beneath the catacombs of the Paris Opera House, exercising a reign of terror over all who inhabit it. He falls madly in love with an innocent young soprano, Christine, and devotes himself to creating a new star by nurturing her extraordinary talents and by employing all of the devious methods at his command.

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