Behind The Mask Documentary [3 of 9] - Phantom Of The Opera

"The Phantom of the Opera" is a musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber, based on the 1976 musical, which in turn was based on the book written by the French novelist Gaston Leroux. The music was composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, with lyrics by Charles Hart and additional lyrics by Richard Stilgoe directed by Hal Prince, choreographed by Gillian Lynne, lighting by Andrew Bridge and designed by Maria Bjornson. The musical focuses on a beautiful soprano, Christine Daaé, who becomes the obsession of a mysterious, disfigured musical genius known as "The Phantom of the Opera", who terrorizes the Paris Opera House.

Inspired by an earlier musical version of the same story by Ken Hill, The Phantom of the Opera opened at Her Majesty's Theatre in London on October 9, 1986, where it celebrated its 9,000th performance on 31 May 2008. The original cast included Michael Crawford as the titular character, Sarah Brightman as Christine, and Steve Barton as Raoul. It is now the second-longest-running West End musical of all time, behind Les Miserables, and the longest-running Broadway musical of all time, breaking the record held by Lloyd Webber's Cats on January 9, 2006, with its 7,486th performance. The musical won both the Olivier Award and Tony Award as the best musical in its debut years on the West End and Broadway.

Despite early negative reviews, including a pan by Frank Rich of the New York Times, both the London and New York productions are still running today. According to the musical's website, it has been seen in 124 cities in 25 countries and played to over 100 million people. With total worldwide box office takings of over £1.8bn ($3.2bn), Phantom is the highest-grossing entertainment event of all time. The New York production alone has grossed US $600 million, making it the most financially successful Broadway show in history. In a sign of its continuing popularity, Phantom ranked second in a BBC Radio 2 listener poll of the "Nation's Number One Essential Musicals"....

Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera has been translated into several languages and produced in over twenty countries on six continents. With only a single exception, these productions have all been "clones", i.e., they use the original staging, direction, sets and costume concepts....

American Idol Top 2 finalists David Cook and David Archuleta both sang two numbers from The Phantom of the Opera during the Andrew Lloyd Webber week: "The Music of the Night" and "Think of Me", respectively......
[Wikipedia]

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Music

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• Behind
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• Documentary
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[kirrtaiteilija]

random: the new lyricist is quite handsome!

Thanku for posting this has a lot of HOT GOSSIP!(get it)

[treecagara]

@kirrtaiteilija - You are most welcome.

[PhantomReviews]

Thanks for posting this. The UK DVD has a documentary called "Behind the Mask" and has some of this material, but its totally different. I much prefer this one, has some interesting stuff in it!

[treecagara]

You are most welcome.

[MadameChristie]

@PhantomReviews Isn't that doc the one for the Toronto Production?

(love your channel BTW XD)

[treecagara]

@MadameChristie - Most welcome, my friend.

The Toronto Production is a different one, to my knowledge.

[meginmd]

Thank GOD they changed the lyrics to All I ask of You.

[Eriksgirl66]

I agree Michael is better for the part.

[MeshaChronos]

@MrElfantasma Thanks for the positive comment sir. Having seen Harley on stage something like 10 times between 1976 and 2009, I have to say he does not deserve any of the malign comments some of these guys are making. I'm not saying anyone has to like him, but he would not have ruined the show, and there are many songs and performances in his repertoire that prove this. If I ever get my hands on the full song, I'm told it's out there, I'll come back and share it with you.

[annagirl1996]

thank god they didn't choose steve

[at1212b]

Harley's version sounded really goofy. As if he was trying to be all trippy.

[celtickiwi11]

The steve harley version is good as a pop song but not acceptable for the stage show... so glad Michael Crawford got the part.

[fourevertwentyseven]

@CatClaws27 shut up.

[liamblackere]

where can I get this on DVD?

[xPhoenixoftheOperax]

ahh so that's the guy who was in that old phantom music video with sarah. Now all the pieces come together. I always wondered why the lyrics to that video were different from the one now.

[MrElfantasma]

Is there a small chance we could listen to the full version of Steve Harley's 'Music of the Night' some day? Although I don't really like him singing the title song (single version), I must admit that I find the snippet of MOTN rather interesting. Of course, it seems to be quite a different approach to the song. And normally, I also prefer a rather classically trained voice singing this song (Ethan Freeman, Scott Davies). But for some reason, I think Mr Harley's voice sounds appealing here.

[ThePhanFullerton]

The 1 dislike was from Steve Harley