Lloyd Webber’s then-wife, the soprano Sarah Brightman, was offered the leading role of Christine, the young singer who becomes the Phantom’s obsession. In 1984, the English playwright Ken Hill mounted a musical version of “Phantom of the Opera” with new lyrics set to music from 19th-century operas, and Mr. The idea of writing a new show didn’t come right away. Lloyd Webber recalled that he was drawn to its “high romance.” At the time, the story was remembered mainly as the basis for a 1925 horror movie starring Lon Cheney, but Mr. He thinks he spent about a dollar on the book and read it that afternoon. Lloyd Webber was browsing at a used book stall on Fifth Avenue and 59th Street in New York City when he first picked up a copy of Gaston Leroux’s 1910 novel “The Phantom of the Opera,” the tale of a deformed, lonely man who falls in love with a beautiful young singer at the Paris Opera House.
“It’s the end of an era, really.” Productions of “Phantom” have sold 145 million tickets in 183 cities around the world, for a worldwide gross of nearly $7 billion.
“What is sad to me is that, with the escalating costs-we have the largest orchestra on Broadway, 40 people in the cast-it’s becoming almost impossible to do a show like ‘Phantom’ anymore,” said the show’s composer, Andrew Lloyd Webber, in an interview. Ticket sales have gone up since the closing announcement, but January, February and March can be bleak months on Broadway. Weekly grosses in August and September hovered around the break-even point, according to figures published by. Tourism has not returned as fast as theater producers had hoped, and “Phantom,” as much of a tourist attraction as the Empire State Building, has taken a hit. It’s a victim of Broadway’s rising costs and soft market as New York City struggles to recover from Covid-19. Last month, the producers of “The Phantom of the Opera” announced that after 35 years on Broadway, the show will play its final performance on Feb. From a Wall Street Journal story by Michael Riedel headlined “How ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ Was Born”:
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