Most interesting, most interesting indeed
http://www.garygoddard.com/hospitality-design/phantasy-resort-and-casino/
Ryan.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
New Phantom's shaping up nicely
By Baz Bamigboye
Last updated at 1:22 AM on 26th February 2010
Andrew Lloyd Webber's score for Love Never Dies soars and I can't get it out of my head - but as 'the good lord' himself observed after the first preview on Monday, 'there's still work to be done'.
He added: 'We're halfway there.'
When I returned to the show on Wednesday some changes had been put in, but director Jack O'Brien, lyricist Glenn Slater, designer Bob Crowley, choreographer Jerry Mitchell and others are concentrating on getting the prologue and the ending right.
They want to trim the prologue to get to a number called The Coney Island Waltz faster.
The ending, which I'm not giving away here, is clumsy and the best minds in theatreland are trying to fathom how to re-stage it.
There are also other moments in Act 1 that are being re-examined, particularly when audiences first see the Phantom. It's an underwhelming moment. We've got to be knocked out by it!
The first song Ramin Karimloo's Phantom sings is Till I Hear You Sing and it's a plaintive cry to see Christine Daae again.
He 'aches down to the core' because he hasn't heard her sing for ten years.
And while Karimloo has a fabulous baritone that stops the show, he doesn't have the showbusiness artistry that Michael Crawford displayed as the original stage Phantom.
That's being worked on.
Sierra Boggess is a true star with Broadway smarts and when she comes on in the second act to sing the title song, she knocks it out of the park, to use the parlance of one of my theatrical friends. It's a terrific melody, beautifully sung.
I've mentioned this in passing before, but the composer explains in the programme how he wrote Love Never Dies (Slater penned the lyrics years later) a long time ago and used it for a song recorded by Kiri Te Kanawa under the title The Heart Is Slow To Learn.
He later used the chorus of the melody for a number in The Beautiful Game, but it was cut.
It fits in just fine as Love Never Dies. Lloyd Webber has created melodies that will last. The creative team have a lot of work to do in different areas but they are confident they will have it all done by official opening night of March 9.
'It's not as if we have songs and storylines to rewrite. It's a question of staging and tweaking,' was how it was put to me.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1253858/Madonna-signs-Abbie-Cornish-new-film-Edward-VIIIs-abdication.html#ixzz0gcWUXqYQ
Last updated at 1:22 AM on 26th February 2010
Andrew Lloyd Webber's score for Love Never Dies soars and I can't get it out of my head - but as 'the good lord' himself observed after the first preview on Monday, 'there's still work to be done'.
He added: 'We're halfway there.'
When I returned to the show on Wednesday some changes had been put in, but director Jack O'Brien, lyricist Glenn Slater, designer Bob Crowley, choreographer Jerry Mitchell and others are concentrating on getting the prologue and the ending right.
They want to trim the prologue to get to a number called The Coney Island Waltz faster.
The ending, which I'm not giving away here, is clumsy and the best minds in theatreland are trying to fathom how to re-stage it.
There are also other moments in Act 1 that are being re-examined, particularly when audiences first see the Phantom. It's an underwhelming moment. We've got to be knocked out by it!
The first song Ramin Karimloo's Phantom sings is Till I Hear You Sing and it's a plaintive cry to see Christine Daae again.
He 'aches down to the core' because he hasn't heard her sing for ten years.
And while Karimloo has a fabulous baritone that stops the show, he doesn't have the showbusiness artistry that Michael Crawford displayed as the original stage Phantom.
That's being worked on.
Sierra Boggess is a true star with Broadway smarts and when she comes on in the second act to sing the title song, she knocks it out of the park, to use the parlance of one of my theatrical friends. It's a terrific melody, beautifully sung.
I've mentioned this in passing before, but the composer explains in the programme how he wrote Love Never Dies (Slater penned the lyrics years later) a long time ago and used it for a song recorded by Kiri Te Kanawa under the title The Heart Is Slow To Learn.
He later used the chorus of the melody for a number in The Beautiful Game, but it was cut.
It fits in just fine as Love Never Dies. Lloyd Webber has created melodies that will last. The creative team have a lot of work to do in different areas but they are confident they will have it all done by official opening night of March 9.
'It's not as if we have songs and storylines to rewrite. It's a question of staging and tweaking,' was how it was put to me.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1253858/Madonna-signs-Abbie-Cornish-new-film-Edward-VIIIs-abdication.html#ixzz0gcWUXqYQ
'Phantom' lives to 'Love' again
Musical sequel wades into high-risk waters
By DAVID BENEDICT
The longest runner in Broadway history and London's second-longest after world record holder "Les Miserables," "The Phantom of the Opera" has amassed global grosses of more than $2.63 billion. With box office revenues higher than for any film or stage play in history, including "Titanic," "E.T." and "Star Wars," it has been seen in 144 cities in 27 countries by more than 100 million people.
Thus the most daunting problem for Andrew Lloyd Webber's follow-up, "Love Never Dies," is great expectations.
The official line from Lloyd Webber's Really Useful Group is that the latest musical is not a sequel but a "continuation" of "The Phantom of the Opera."
And small wonder -- outside of three "Nunsense" follow-ups, musical theater has never pulled off a hit sequel. The shortlived "The Best Little Whorehouse Goes Public" and the even shorter "Bring Back Birdie" (four perfs) stand as evidence.
On the plus side, Lloyd Webber's £6 million ($9.25 million) new tuner arrives with a readymade marketing hook via all those potential ticketbuyers who have already bought into the story -- having experienced "the brilliant original," the phrase currently emblazoning London posters for "Phantom."
Helmer Jack O'Brien ("Hairspray," "The Coast of Utopia") has been on board for about 2 1/2 years. He's clear-eyed about the pros and cons of this unique property.
"No one will thank us for doing this," he tells Variety. "I have said that since the beginning. This is not something you do as a lark, without a sense of responsibility. Whatever one thinks of the first show, it has gone into the imaginative repertoire of its audience."
O'Brien points out that according to Lloyd Webber, when "Phantom" opened in 1986, the smart money was on rival tuner "Chess." The latter premiered five months earlier but only managed a run just shy of three years. "'Phantom' just slipped in," says O'Brien. "Then whatever happened, happened."
He believes the original's global success means the new show will be scrutinized "probably unfairly," but O'Brien remains buoyant. The book -- on which he worked alongside a slew of collaborators past and present including Frederick Forsyth, Ben Elton and lyricist Glenn Slater -- is set 10 years after "Phantom" amid the eerie fairgrounds of Coney Island. The aim is not unlike the sequel-meets-prequel approach of "The Godfather Part II," which improved upon the original.
These days, Lloyd Webber is arguably more famous as a showbiz mogul than as a composer (his most recent new tuner, "The Woman in White," was not a financial success). Not only did he produce Jeremy Sams' hit revival of "The Sound of Music," he made himself immensely visible -- and successful -- as "The Lord" on primetime BBC TV, judging talent shows that cast leads in his productions. (Lloyd Webber will revisit that role later this year, casting his forthcoming revamp of "The Wizard of Oz," skedded for 2011.)
For "Love Never Dies," he has eschewed TV casting, instead hiring Ramin Karimloo as the Phantom (he has played the role in the original onstage) with Sierra Boggess ("The Little Mermaid") as Christine.
Lack of TV pre-sell, however, hasn't harmed bookings. Where "The Woman in White," opened in London in 2004 to a $4.6 million advance, "Love Never Dies" currently stands at $12.3 million. That said, the figure wilts in comparison with Cameron Mackintosh's 2009 "Oliver!" revival, which opened to a record-breaking $23 million.
Really Useful Group chief executive Andre Ptaszynski tells Variety the show needs to take $50.9 million to fully recoup. In the 1,500-seat Adelphi Theater, that will take a year. But RUG owns the much larger London Palladium and Theater Royal Drury Lane. Why not choose either of those?
"Essentially, it's a love story and so it needs a more intimate space that will make it more fulfilling for the audience," Ptaszynski says. "And if it works, it's likely to sit longer and more happily in a smaller theater."
One of the key factors determining the hoped-for longevity of "Love Never Dies" is the surrounding economic and cultural climate.
The design and sheer spectacle of both "Les Miz" and "Phantom" helped define their era within a booming economy. Attendances in both London and Gotham have unexpectedly risen during the recession, but the chances of a new, non-jukebox show sticking around are slim. With the exception of the phenomenon that is "Wicked," the survivors these days are either back-catalog tuners like "Mamma Mia!" or Disney's revamps of its movies, "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Lion King." Even those have lately shown less traction -- witness "The Little Mermaid" and "Tarzan."
As with most grand-scale tuners, "Love Never Dies" has had pre-opening problems, beginning with the aborted idea of near-simultaneous openings in London, New York and Shanghai, dreamed up 15 months ago by Ptaszynski and Lloyd Webber.
"After a couple of months, we realized the folly of our ways," Ptaszynski says.
The new rollout for the show allows more room to maneuver.
"We expect to announce a late fall opening on Broadway," Ptaszynski says. "There's lots of working time in the spring if needed."
The show's March 9 London preem was postponed from six months earlier to allow for a comprehensive redesign and reorchestration. Then, a surprisingly brief technical rehearsal period in the theater forced the cancellation of the first preview. At the subsequent first performance, a technical hitch caused everything to grind to a temporary halt.
That, however, is par for the course for new tuners. During the original "Cats" rehearsals Judi Dench was forced to withdraw from the role of Grizabella when she snapped her Achilles tendon -- which is how Elaine Paige got to sing "Memory."
One thing is certain. The show has a buzz. When details of the forthcoming CD appeared online, hundreds of the original's self-styled "Phans" began blogging feverishly, trying to work out the plot from song titles.
Whatever the pressure, as O'Brien tells it, he's not frightened.
"I'm exhilarated. Getting over, around and past the success of the original will be a kind of victory," he says.
What sort of victory remains to be seen.
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118015808.html?categoryId=15&cs=1
By DAVID BENEDICT
The longest runner in Broadway history and London's second-longest after world record holder "Les Miserables," "The Phantom of the Opera" has amassed global grosses of more than $2.63 billion. With box office revenues higher than for any film or stage play in history, including "Titanic," "E.T." and "Star Wars," it has been seen in 144 cities in 27 countries by more than 100 million people.
Thus the most daunting problem for Andrew Lloyd Webber's follow-up, "Love Never Dies," is great expectations.
The official line from Lloyd Webber's Really Useful Group is that the latest musical is not a sequel but a "continuation" of "The Phantom of the Opera."
And small wonder -- outside of three "Nunsense" follow-ups, musical theater has never pulled off a hit sequel. The shortlived "The Best Little Whorehouse Goes Public" and the even shorter "Bring Back Birdie" (four perfs) stand as evidence.
On the plus side, Lloyd Webber's £6 million ($9.25 million) new tuner arrives with a readymade marketing hook via all those potential ticketbuyers who have already bought into the story -- having experienced "the brilliant original," the phrase currently emblazoning London posters for "Phantom."
Helmer Jack O'Brien ("Hairspray," "The Coast of Utopia") has been on board for about 2 1/2 years. He's clear-eyed about the pros and cons of this unique property.
"No one will thank us for doing this," he tells Variety. "I have said that since the beginning. This is not something you do as a lark, without a sense of responsibility. Whatever one thinks of the first show, it has gone into the imaginative repertoire of its audience."
O'Brien points out that according to Lloyd Webber, when "Phantom" opened in 1986, the smart money was on rival tuner "Chess." The latter premiered five months earlier but only managed a run just shy of three years. "'Phantom' just slipped in," says O'Brien. "Then whatever happened, happened."
He believes the original's global success means the new show will be scrutinized "probably unfairly," but O'Brien remains buoyant. The book -- on which he worked alongside a slew of collaborators past and present including Frederick Forsyth, Ben Elton and lyricist Glenn Slater -- is set 10 years after "Phantom" amid the eerie fairgrounds of Coney Island. The aim is not unlike the sequel-meets-prequel approach of "The Godfather Part II," which improved upon the original.
These days, Lloyd Webber is arguably more famous as a showbiz mogul than as a composer (his most recent new tuner, "The Woman in White," was not a financial success). Not only did he produce Jeremy Sams' hit revival of "The Sound of Music," he made himself immensely visible -- and successful -- as "The Lord" on primetime BBC TV, judging talent shows that cast leads in his productions. (Lloyd Webber will revisit that role later this year, casting his forthcoming revamp of "The Wizard of Oz," skedded for 2011.)
For "Love Never Dies," he has eschewed TV casting, instead hiring Ramin Karimloo as the Phantom (he has played the role in the original onstage) with Sierra Boggess ("The Little Mermaid") as Christine.
Lack of TV pre-sell, however, hasn't harmed bookings. Where "The Woman in White," opened in London in 2004 to a $4.6 million advance, "Love Never Dies" currently stands at $12.3 million. That said, the figure wilts in comparison with Cameron Mackintosh's 2009 "Oliver!" revival, which opened to a record-breaking $23 million.
Really Useful Group chief executive Andre Ptaszynski tells Variety the show needs to take $50.9 million to fully recoup. In the 1,500-seat Adelphi Theater, that will take a year. But RUG owns the much larger London Palladium and Theater Royal Drury Lane. Why not choose either of those?
"Essentially, it's a love story and so it needs a more intimate space that will make it more fulfilling for the audience," Ptaszynski says. "And if it works, it's likely to sit longer and more happily in a smaller theater."
One of the key factors determining the hoped-for longevity of "Love Never Dies" is the surrounding economic and cultural climate.
The design and sheer spectacle of both "Les Miz" and "Phantom" helped define their era within a booming economy. Attendances in both London and Gotham have unexpectedly risen during the recession, but the chances of a new, non-jukebox show sticking around are slim. With the exception of the phenomenon that is "Wicked," the survivors these days are either back-catalog tuners like "Mamma Mia!" or Disney's revamps of its movies, "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Lion King." Even those have lately shown less traction -- witness "The Little Mermaid" and "Tarzan."
As with most grand-scale tuners, "Love Never Dies" has had pre-opening problems, beginning with the aborted idea of near-simultaneous openings in London, New York and Shanghai, dreamed up 15 months ago by Ptaszynski and Lloyd Webber.
"After a couple of months, we realized the folly of our ways," Ptaszynski says.
The new rollout for the show allows more room to maneuver.
"We expect to announce a late fall opening on Broadway," Ptaszynski says. "There's lots of working time in the spring if needed."
The show's March 9 London preem was postponed from six months earlier to allow for a comprehensive redesign and reorchestration. Then, a surprisingly brief technical rehearsal period in the theater forced the cancellation of the first preview. At the subsequent first performance, a technical hitch caused everything to grind to a temporary halt.
That, however, is par for the course for new tuners. During the original "Cats" rehearsals Judi Dench was forced to withdraw from the role of Grizabella when she snapped her Achilles tendon -- which is how Elaine Paige got to sing "Memory."
One thing is certain. The show has a buzz. When details of the forthcoming CD appeared online, hundreds of the original's self-styled "Phans" began blogging feverishly, trying to work out the plot from song titles.
Whatever the pressure, as O'Brien tells it, he's not frightened.
"I'm exhilarated. Getting over, around and past the success of the original will be a kind of victory," he says.
What sort of victory remains to be seen.
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118015808.html?categoryId=15&cs=1
The man in the mask is back
Elizabeth Renzetti
London — From Saturday's Globe and Mail
This is what the Phantom has brought with him across the Atlantic Ocean: the life-size mannequin of his lost love, Christine Daae; the cunning white mask that covers his disfigurement; his magnificent pipes; and his rage. Oh, yes. The Phantom may have moved to America, but he hasn’t traded his gothic obsession for a golden retriever and a pair of slippers.
Near the beginning of Love Never Dies, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s new sequel to Phantom of the Opera, the Phantom, high in his crazy-villain lair above Coney Island, stands in front of his Christine doll and sings a great belter of a song called Till I Hear You Sing Once More. It’s a temple-crumbler, and the audience at a preview at the Adelphi Theatre this week received it with great appreciation.
They could not know that Ramin Karimloo, the young Canadian actor originating the role of the Phantom in this show, once brought equal passion to singing in a Tragically Hip cover band, or that his obsessions extend to hockey, not opera ingenues, or that, unlike the Phantom he has never been driven to murder, but does like driving a motorcycle. He doesn’t hate the world, but does loathe buffets. So no real resemblance to the Phantom, then, except for those pipes. Here is proof of Laurence Olivier’s wise observation: “It’s called acting, dear boy.”’
Next month, when Love Never Dies officially opens in London, the beady eyes of every critic and musical-theatre aficionado will be trained on Karimloo and his co-star, Sierra Boggess. After all, Phantom of the Opera was not merely a musical but – in the producers’ words – “the most successful single piece of entertainment of all time.” In certain quarters, the knives are already drawn; in others, the Kleenex boxes are being stockpiled. It’s a heavy weight to carry for a 31-year-old with no formal vocal training, who is vague about whether he actually graduated from high school, who paid his dues singing on a cruise ship and whose main dream, at one point, was to meet the Hip’s Gord Downie.
“I’m very calm, actually,” says Karimloo. “When I was onstage for the first time in the mask and the makeup, I wasn’t nervous. My stomach wasn’t flipping, I wasn’t worried about opening. I was thinking, ‘I can’t wait for people to see this. I’m ready.’”
The sense of calm is a recent acquisition. Last fall, Lloyd Webber announced the new musical to a packed theatre in London, as the Phantom of the Opera’s bona fides were trotted out like poodles at a dog show: longest-running musical on Broadway, 40 million albums sold, productions in 49 cities, 50 theatre awards. Afterward, Karimloo came out onstage to perform Till I Hear You Sing Once More for the first time in public – and in front of jackal-eyed reporters, no less. “That’s the hardest song I’ve ever had to do,” he says, shaking his head. “I couldn’t sleep the night before.’’
At the same event, Love Never Dies’ veteran director, Jack O’Brien, talked about the difficulty of casting: “Finding the actors to do this was not easy. These are daunting roles, and vocally punishing.”
As it turned out, the producers had to go to America to find Boggess, their Christine, but the Phantom – as is his wont – was hiding right under their noses. Karimloo was playing the title role in the Phantom of the Opera onstage in the London production in 2008 when, one day, he noticed a series of missed calls from his agent on his phone. “Where are you?” the agent shrieked. “Andrew wants to see you at four.” It was 2:30; Karimloo joked that he’d try to make it. He didn’t need to ask who Andrew was.
It was no secret that Lloyd Webber had long been tinkering with a sequel to the Phantom, which opened in London in 1986. That musical, based on the 1911 novel by Gaston Leroux, follows a tormented musical genius who lives in the Paris Opera as he pines after a young singer, murders a couple of annoying people and causes a large light fixture to plummet to the floor. It ends with the Phantom broken and alone.
For the sequel, Lloyd Webber first worked with novelist Frederick Forsyth on a version that had the Phantom moving to Manhattan, but he abandoned that. Later, lyricists Ben Elton and Glenn Slater stepped in. On the afternoon when Karimloo was summoned, he had no idea what he’d be singing for Lloyd Webber. He got to the office, and because he doesn’t read music, had someone sing him the part – one of the new songs, which he then performed for the composer. Lloyd Webber listened intently and said, “That’s how it should be done.’’
It was not a fait accompli. Karimloo sang the new songs at workshops, at Lloyd Webber’s house – all while performing eight shows of the original Phantom every week – and still didn’t know if he had the part. He wondered if they’d cast an unknown for the biggest new role in musical theatre. “Deep down I kept thinking, they’ve at least got to entertain getting a big name for the Phantom.”
Then the call came; he had the part. “That’s when the nerves started,” he says with a laugh. He soon began recording the cast album in London, while performing at night and trying to make time for his wife and two young sons.
Karimloo, whose family moved to Canada from Iran when he was two years old, is trim, handsome, exceedingly polite even by Canadian standards, constantly fretting about “tooting my own horn.” He’s a success story for the American Idol generation: With no vocal training except what he’d learned from rock ’n’ roll, he arrived in London, found an agent and began a steady climb from understudy to leading man.
In looks and temperament he’s less Phantom, more Raoul – the romantic lead in the Phantom and its sequel, a captain-of-the-fencing-team type. (In fact, he was once cast as Raoul in the London production of Phantom, despite the reservations of producer Cameron Mackintosh.)
The new role brings Karimloo full circle: He only became interested in musical theatre after being dragged, with a teenager’s sullenness, to a production of Phantom of the Opera at the old Pantages Theatre in Toronto. It was a revelation. Here was a way to sing like a rock star, and act, and get chicks. Had he never been interested in musical theatre before? He shoots an incredulous look. How many boys love musicals? “Um … no.”
This lifelong devotion to Phantom puts him in a vast company of people, many of whom have seen the musical onstage or on film, and own the CD (and possibly the T-shirt and pillow as well.) A vocal minority of those people have already loudly protested against Love Never Dies, prior to its opening on March 9 (see, for example, the Facebook group Love Should Die). As O’Brien, the director, said at the launch, “No one is going to thank us for doing this. We’re playing around with aspects of people’s memories that are sacrosanct. We’d better know what we’re doing.”
Already, the road has been bumpy. There’s been talk of insufficient preparation time for such a complex production. The initial performances were postponed, and when the first preview finally opened this week, a technical glitch delayed the performance. As well, Lloyd Webber suffered health problems, announcing last fall that he had been treated for prostate cancer.
For almost 20 years, on and off, the composer’s been working on a sequel, ever since Maria Bjornson, Phantom’s designer, had told him she disliked the ending. That ending – with the murderous Phantom sobbing as his true love Christine leaves with drippy Raoul – plagued many of the creative team. “She goes off with the cute guy,” says O’Brien, ““But isn’t the real story between the Phantom and Christine? That’s where the knife goes in. We never find out why he’s so unpleasant.”
Well, if you ask Karimloo, the Phantom’s not unpleasant, just misunderstood – for a clinical reason. The actor likes to come up with a backstory for his characters, and he decided that the explanation for the Phantom’s behaviour – his brilliance and social awkwardness, his obsession, his inability to fit in with the world – stemmed from Asperger’s syndrome, a form of high-functioning autism. When he announced this publicly, he received both letters of support from people with Asperger’s, and howls of outrage.
“There was a bit of backlash about that,” Karimloo says. “But I thought, why? I’m not saying he’s a killer because he has Asperger’s. … It humanizes him. That, married with the fact that he’s deformed, was why he was hounded. But the darkness doesn’t come from Asperger’s, his genius and his beauty does.”
In the new production, the Phantom is still a genius, but he’s a little more at home in the world, because he’s chosen to live among the freaks of Coney Island. No lighting fixtures were harmed in the making of the show, but something impressive does drop from the ceiling. And because it’s set at the seaside, and not in a subterranean lair, the Phantom gets his moment in the sun.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/theatre/the-man-in-the-mask-is-back/article1482654/
London — From Saturday's Globe and Mail
This is what the Phantom has brought with him across the Atlantic Ocean: the life-size mannequin of his lost love, Christine Daae; the cunning white mask that covers his disfigurement; his magnificent pipes; and his rage. Oh, yes. The Phantom may have moved to America, but he hasn’t traded his gothic obsession for a golden retriever and a pair of slippers.
Near the beginning of Love Never Dies, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s new sequel to Phantom of the Opera, the Phantom, high in his crazy-villain lair above Coney Island, stands in front of his Christine doll and sings a great belter of a song called Till I Hear You Sing Once More. It’s a temple-crumbler, and the audience at a preview at the Adelphi Theatre this week received it with great appreciation.
They could not know that Ramin Karimloo, the young Canadian actor originating the role of the Phantom in this show, once brought equal passion to singing in a Tragically Hip cover band, or that his obsessions extend to hockey, not opera ingenues, or that, unlike the Phantom he has never been driven to murder, but does like driving a motorcycle. He doesn’t hate the world, but does loathe buffets. So no real resemblance to the Phantom, then, except for those pipes. Here is proof of Laurence Olivier’s wise observation: “It’s called acting, dear boy.”’
Next month, when Love Never Dies officially opens in London, the beady eyes of every critic and musical-theatre aficionado will be trained on Karimloo and his co-star, Sierra Boggess. After all, Phantom of the Opera was not merely a musical but – in the producers’ words – “the most successful single piece of entertainment of all time.” In certain quarters, the knives are already drawn; in others, the Kleenex boxes are being stockpiled. It’s a heavy weight to carry for a 31-year-old with no formal vocal training, who is vague about whether he actually graduated from high school, who paid his dues singing on a cruise ship and whose main dream, at one point, was to meet the Hip’s Gord Downie.
“I’m very calm, actually,” says Karimloo. “When I was onstage for the first time in the mask and the makeup, I wasn’t nervous. My stomach wasn’t flipping, I wasn’t worried about opening. I was thinking, ‘I can’t wait for people to see this. I’m ready.’”
The sense of calm is a recent acquisition. Last fall, Lloyd Webber announced the new musical to a packed theatre in London, as the Phantom of the Opera’s bona fides were trotted out like poodles at a dog show: longest-running musical on Broadway, 40 million albums sold, productions in 49 cities, 50 theatre awards. Afterward, Karimloo came out onstage to perform Till I Hear You Sing Once More for the first time in public – and in front of jackal-eyed reporters, no less. “That’s the hardest song I’ve ever had to do,” he says, shaking his head. “I couldn’t sleep the night before.’’
At the same event, Love Never Dies’ veteran director, Jack O’Brien, talked about the difficulty of casting: “Finding the actors to do this was not easy. These are daunting roles, and vocally punishing.”
As it turned out, the producers had to go to America to find Boggess, their Christine, but the Phantom – as is his wont – was hiding right under their noses. Karimloo was playing the title role in the Phantom of the Opera onstage in the London production in 2008 when, one day, he noticed a series of missed calls from his agent on his phone. “Where are you?” the agent shrieked. “Andrew wants to see you at four.” It was 2:30; Karimloo joked that he’d try to make it. He didn’t need to ask who Andrew was.
It was no secret that Lloyd Webber had long been tinkering with a sequel to the Phantom, which opened in London in 1986. That musical, based on the 1911 novel by Gaston Leroux, follows a tormented musical genius who lives in the Paris Opera as he pines after a young singer, murders a couple of annoying people and causes a large light fixture to plummet to the floor. It ends with the Phantom broken and alone.
For the sequel, Lloyd Webber first worked with novelist Frederick Forsyth on a version that had the Phantom moving to Manhattan, but he abandoned that. Later, lyricists Ben Elton and Glenn Slater stepped in. On the afternoon when Karimloo was summoned, he had no idea what he’d be singing for Lloyd Webber. He got to the office, and because he doesn’t read music, had someone sing him the part – one of the new songs, which he then performed for the composer. Lloyd Webber listened intently and said, “That’s how it should be done.’’
It was not a fait accompli. Karimloo sang the new songs at workshops, at Lloyd Webber’s house – all while performing eight shows of the original Phantom every week – and still didn’t know if he had the part. He wondered if they’d cast an unknown for the biggest new role in musical theatre. “Deep down I kept thinking, they’ve at least got to entertain getting a big name for the Phantom.”
Then the call came; he had the part. “That’s when the nerves started,” he says with a laugh. He soon began recording the cast album in London, while performing at night and trying to make time for his wife and two young sons.
Karimloo, whose family moved to Canada from Iran when he was two years old, is trim, handsome, exceedingly polite even by Canadian standards, constantly fretting about “tooting my own horn.” He’s a success story for the American Idol generation: With no vocal training except what he’d learned from rock ’n’ roll, he arrived in London, found an agent and began a steady climb from understudy to leading man.
In looks and temperament he’s less Phantom, more Raoul – the romantic lead in the Phantom and its sequel, a captain-of-the-fencing-team type. (In fact, he was once cast as Raoul in the London production of Phantom, despite the reservations of producer Cameron Mackintosh.)
The new role brings Karimloo full circle: He only became interested in musical theatre after being dragged, with a teenager’s sullenness, to a production of Phantom of the Opera at the old Pantages Theatre in Toronto. It was a revelation. Here was a way to sing like a rock star, and act, and get chicks. Had he never been interested in musical theatre before? He shoots an incredulous look. How many boys love musicals? “Um … no.”
This lifelong devotion to Phantom puts him in a vast company of people, many of whom have seen the musical onstage or on film, and own the CD (and possibly the T-shirt and pillow as well.) A vocal minority of those people have already loudly protested against Love Never Dies, prior to its opening on March 9 (see, for example, the Facebook group Love Should Die). As O’Brien, the director, said at the launch, “No one is going to thank us for doing this. We’re playing around with aspects of people’s memories that are sacrosanct. We’d better know what we’re doing.”
Already, the road has been bumpy. There’s been talk of insufficient preparation time for such a complex production. The initial performances were postponed, and when the first preview finally opened this week, a technical glitch delayed the performance. As well, Lloyd Webber suffered health problems, announcing last fall that he had been treated for prostate cancer.
For almost 20 years, on and off, the composer’s been working on a sequel, ever since Maria Bjornson, Phantom’s designer, had told him she disliked the ending. That ending – with the murderous Phantom sobbing as his true love Christine leaves with drippy Raoul – plagued many of the creative team. “She goes off with the cute guy,” says O’Brien, ““But isn’t the real story between the Phantom and Christine? That’s where the knife goes in. We never find out why he’s so unpleasant.”
Well, if you ask Karimloo, the Phantom’s not unpleasant, just misunderstood – for a clinical reason. The actor likes to come up with a backstory for his characters, and he decided that the explanation for the Phantom’s behaviour – his brilliance and social awkwardness, his obsession, his inability to fit in with the world – stemmed from Asperger’s syndrome, a form of high-functioning autism. When he announced this publicly, he received both letters of support from people with Asperger’s, and howls of outrage.
“There was a bit of backlash about that,” Karimloo says. “But I thought, why? I’m not saying he’s a killer because he has Asperger’s. … It humanizes him. That, married with the fact that he’s deformed, was why he was hounded. But the darkness doesn’t come from Asperger’s, his genius and his beauty does.”
In the new production, the Phantom is still a genius, but he’s a little more at home in the world, because he’s chosen to live among the freaks of Coney Island. No lighting fixtures were harmed in the making of the show, but something impressive does drop from the ceiling. And because it’s set at the seaside, and not in a subterranean lair, the Phantom gets his moment in the sun.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/theatre/the-man-in-the-mask-is-back/article1482654/
The man behind the mask: Andrew Lloyd Webber on his new musical Love Never Dies
The Phantom of the Opera is back in the musical Love Never Dies. Andrew Lloyd Webber tells Edward Seckerson how he came up with the story, composed the music and takes criticism
Friday, 26 February 2010
The Lord works in mysterious ways. For years now Andrew Lloyd Webber has nursed the idea of a sequel to his most successful show The Phantom of the Opera, for years Phantom fans have pondered what might have become of him after that “final exit”.
Nightly he vanishes from his subterranean lair deep in the bowels of the Paris Opera House (a.k.a. Her Majesty’s Theatre) leaving only his iconic half-mask as a symbolic reminder of his continuing omnipotence on stages throughout the world: 149 cities across 86 countries. Follow that. Lloyd Webber has.
It’s 10 years on from the fabled “disappearance” and five minutes walk from Her Majesty’s to the Adelphi Theatre where Phantom 2 Love Never Dies is in the final stages of preparation. The man himself – Lloyd Webber, that is – escorts me into the gutted auditorium where an army of technicians and banks of computer screens are rather more suggestive of space exploration than musical theatre. The orchestra will be in situ for the first time and in a couple of hours the show’s big opener will see Coney Island, New York, rise from the ashes of one of its countless fires and reanimate to the strains of a sumptuous bitter-sweet waltz in the grand tradition of Lloyd Webber’s great idol Richard Rodgers’ Carousel.
The Coney Island setting came out of years of think-tanking involving personalities as diverse as Frederick “The Jackal” Forsyth, Ben Elton, the show’s lyricist Glenn Slater and director Jack O’Brien of whom Lloyd Webber says “Anyone directing Stoppard’s The Coast of Utopia, Puccini’s Trittico, and Hairspray in one year is someone you have to meet.” Actually it was Ben Elton’s idea to carry all of the original characters forward to the sequel. Their identity was already well established globally, he said, and introducing major new characters into the mix would only muddy the waters. He was right.
So who exactly wrote the book? “Well, with a largely through-sung show it’s harder to say because everybody, the whole creative team, are chipping in with ideas. But obviously once Glenn Slater, our lyricist, came on board and the words themselves started flowing then everything began falling into place and the Coney Island setting became more and more dramatically appealing.”
Coney Island in 1907 was pretty much the eighth wonder of the world. It was the mother of amusement parks, the only good reason, said Freud, for making the long trip across the Atlantic. It was somewhere the Phantom, still pining for his one true love Christine Daaé, could fit right in – a decadent playground of freak shows, escapologists, illusionists, and great showmen. It also happened to be the age of Vaudeville. As settings for musicals go this one was a no-brainer. But establishing Coney Island in the minds and imaginations of audiences for whom it was probably nothing more than the name of some faded fairground was the challenge that eventually gave rise to the show’s dramatic opening.
And there’s a rather nice link here between Phantom’s original designer, the late, lamented, Maria Bjornson – whose famous gold proscenium sculptures brought the Paris Opera to Her Majesty’s Theatre – and Bob Crowley who spirits Coney Island’s world-beating rollercoaster from the mists of time and brings the seedy boardwalk to life before our very eyes. Lloyd Webber recalls that when Coney Island was first mentioned it was Bjornson who excitedly hit upon the idea that the Phantom could now reside in one of Coney’s skyscraping towers. From subterranean to high-rise living – a nice twist. From there he could truly be master of all he surveyed. And so at the start of Love Never Dies he has sent for his songbird Christine who travels to New York with her rather dull husband Raoul (remember him?) and son Gustave not really knowing but surely suspecting who might be behind an invitation for her to perform at Coney Island’s newest attraction Phantasma.
Lloyd Webber’s long-held obsession with this project is matched only by the Phantom’s for Christine (remember it was the second Mrs. Lloyd Webber, Sarah Brightman, who created the role) and as we retire to a quiet room over Rules Restaurant he makes no apologies for being the controlling force behind it. It’s the principal reason why his shows are “through-sung”. He’s not happy if the music isn’t driving the evening.
“If you just want ten songs to fit somebody else’s script then I’m not really the composer for that.” To that end his melodies are the dramatic and emotional fabric of his work and in Love Never Dies – undoubtedly one of his best scores – they are intricately woven.
“Once I had the plot it was fairly obvious to me that the first major melodic strand would have to be the Phantom’s song of yearning for Christine. Another decision I made quite early on was that the title song – which was something I originally wrote with this piece in mind and which was first sung by Kiri Te Kanawa - was going to be Christine’s big performance number and should be kept pretty much exclusively for that moment. Then there was the question of how I should handle the moment when Christine and the Phantom first meet again – and there I took the risky strategy of giving the stage to just them for the best part of 15 minutes. The themes that appear there – including the song “Once Upon Another Time” – would be carried forward towards the eventual dénouement.”
That song, that melody, typifies Lloyd Webber’s musical personality. If it was sung in German (as no doubt it will be one day) it could easily be mistaken for Franz Lehar. In fact I’d go so far as to characterise Lloyd Webber’s work a throwback to a bygone melodic style – more gracious, more opulent. His lyric ballads are surely unsurpassed since the heyday of Ivor Novello, Frederick Loewe and Richard Rodgers. The middle-eight or “release” of “Look with your heart”, another song from the show, is pure Rodgers; it sings and plays like an affectionate homage.
But it’s what I call the emotional memory of these melodies that give them such dramatic potency. The Phantom’s big number in Love Never Dies, “Till I hear you Sing”, is one of the best ballads Lloyd Webber has ever written – an absolute corker – but it stays with you because something about the ache within it won’t let go. When Christine agrees to sing for her mentor one last time she does so to the same tune and the frisson of recognition it engenders makes for a real goosebumps moment. That’s what great melodists do – hard to define but easy to recognise. It’s where the next note seems somehow inevitable the second after you’ve heard it. Rodgers once said “a great melody implies its own harmony” and Lloyd Webber certainly holds true to that maxim.
So where on earth here do these melodies come from? Interestingly he gives me a very similar answer to that which Leonard Bernstein gave me many years ago – that he really has no idea, that the tunes and their attendant harmonies have a habit of creeping up on him while he’s “musing” at the piano. He knows instinctively when he’s hit upon something – it might be the beginnings of a melody, a phrase or two or something more – and even if there is no immediate use for it he’ll write it down and keep it until the right moment calls it to mind. Sometimes the ideas come quickly and easily: “No Matter What” (from Whistle Down the Wind) was one of those – the cash registers were heard ringing before even the last note was down. At other times songs are very much “composed” in response to a specific motivation or brief. With Lloyd Webber’s Eurovision entry “It’s My Time” a catchy hook was not just desirable but required – and anybody that thinks that’s just a bog-standard tune should think again.
I am now doubly curious about the evolution of “ ‘Till I Hear You Sing”: “This took several drafts and it was the tiniest adjustments that made the difference”, says Lloyd Webber. “There are ways it could have gone which would have made it acceptable but ordinary but the use of the flattened 7th made it more intriguing. Other little things like dropping from the key of D to C major affect the listener in ways they can feel but might not be able to identify or explain. I instinctively know when something is right and when it isn’t.”
Actually Lloyd Webber’s melodies readily lend themselves to development but the man himself insists that he is not a symphonic composer but a dramatic one:
“The one thing I have always felt about musical theatre is that it is to an extraordinary degree about construction. Where I have come unstuck sometimes has mostly been to do with the stories not being quite right or not connecting with a contemporary audience. The Woman in White was a perfect example because the central premise, so shocking in Victorian times, didn’t turn a hair with audiences today. I firmly believe that even the greatest theatre songs ever written – like “Some Enchanted Evening” from South Pacific – wouldn’t be known today if they had been in the wrong place of the wrong theatrical vehicle. I once did an album years ago with Sarah Brightman called “The Songs That Got Away” and heard as a collection you’re thinking ‘this is one of the best musicals I’ve ever heard’ but for various reasons each of these songs was buried on account of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. So structure and context are everything – and if you look at a work like Britten’s Peter Grimes there isn’t a wasted or misplaced moment anywhere. As music theatre it’s perfect. Like act two of La Boheme. Anyone considering a career in musical theatre should study that.”
One of the key dramatic moments in Love Never Dies comes when the Phantom starts to recognise an innate kinship with the boy Gustave (echoes of Miles in Britten’s The Turn of the Screw). The tune the boy plays and sings at this point in the show is called “Beautiful” and its eerie Svengali-like chant – truly, subversively, “music of the night” - evolves into one of the principal leitmotifs of the score – quietly sensuous but potentially grand and visionary, too. I am reminded of a very accomplished orchestral piece Aurora by Andrew’s father William Lloyd Webber whose music brother Julian has tirelessly championed over the years.
“It’s interesting you mention that piece because I think it represented a sensuous side to my father’s personality that he was rarely able to show and that I am beginning to realise now was a big influence on me – particularly with this show. It’s made me think about why he was unable to show that side of himself and why I am?.”
There are still those among Lloyd Webber’s detractors who resolutely refuse to acknowledge his talent and doggedly insist that his huge international success is the product of clever global marketing and handfuls of formulaic hit songs liberally reprised. How does he feel about that?
“I always think of something Richard Rodgers said to me when I got to know him slightly towards the end of his life. He told me how depressed he’d got by the reviews for The King and I whose score was compared unfavourably with his previous shows. But even he – perhaps the most gifted popular melodist of them all – realised that it’s not always possible for audiences or for that matter critics to take in what they are hearing on a first or even second hearing. Musical theatre history is littered with bad reviews for now classic pieces. But there’s something else and that’s this: my job is to communicate with my audience and frankly should they be expected to recognise that the ordering of the poems in Cats, for instance, is very precisely structured to create a seamless narrative or that the opening of the show is a mock-fugue? It’s like what you say about the melodies: the effect of those repetitions, whether sung or in underscoring, has an emotional not an intellectual purpose.” The subliminal references to Phantom 1 in Love Never Dies will hopefully make aficionados smile.
After opening Love Never Dies Lloyd Webber has one more pressing date with reality TV when the nation-wide search for the little girl in the gingham frock –Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz – gathers momentum. Lloyd Webber believes that the classic movie has never successfully transferred to the stage because Arlen and Harburg’s songs were too thinly spread. The respective estates have given him special dispensation to create some additional numbers and if that means batting off a succession of Graham Norton “friends of Dorothy” jokes, then it’ll be well worth it. He’s hugely encouraged that these shows appear to have ignited a renewed enthusiasm for musical theatre among the teenage generation. The Wicked audience could now be ready for the prequel.
But back to the year’s biggest opening night. “I’m genuinely excited”, he says, “to see what people make of Love Never Dies because in so many ways it goes much further than the old Phantom did. Without giving anything away about the ending, it’s like I closed a door when I put the last notes down. I don’t think I’ll be able to go any further down this particular musical path – well, not for a while anyway.”
And long, long after that, will people still be humming “‘Till I Hear You Sing”? Of course, they will.
'Love Never Dies' opens at the Adelphi Theatre, London WC2, on 9 March (adelphitheatre.co.uk)
The best of Lloyd Webber: four timeless shows
The Phantom of the Opera
The composer's then wife Sarah Brightman was his muse for this piece a paean of love for her. She played the heroine Christine, a role which struck such a chord with some obsessive fans that they changed their name to Christine. The memorable 'coup de théâtre' of a chandelier seeming to crash into the audience so alarmed the security guard of one visiting royal that he bundled his charge to the floor.
Sunset Boulevard
His most underrated musical. Both dramatically and musically this merited a much longer run and more critical acclaim than it had. But it did give a plum role to actresses of a certain age, from Glenn Close to Petula Clark, with Faye Dunaway being famously rejected by Lloyd Webber.
Cats
Deciding to write a musical around TS Eliot's cat poems was an inspired decision. Trevor Nunn was inspired, too, in his lyrics for the showstopper "Memory", a genuinely moving number, with a little help from Eliot of course. Seats in the auditorium of the New London Theatre that moved added more thrill. It broke all records and only closed because it had reached audience saturation-point.
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
Lloyd Webber and his first lyricist Tim Rice at their joyous best. Their love of pure rock'n'roll is evident in this early collaboration, which contains a lot more humour than later works. Revivals reveal it as evergreen.
David Lister
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/features/the-man-behind-the-mask-andrew-lloyd-webber-on-his-new-musical-love-never-dies-1910817.html
Friday, 26 February 2010
The Lord works in mysterious ways. For years now Andrew Lloyd Webber has nursed the idea of a sequel to his most successful show The Phantom of the Opera, for years Phantom fans have pondered what might have become of him after that “final exit”.
Nightly he vanishes from his subterranean lair deep in the bowels of the Paris Opera House (a.k.a. Her Majesty’s Theatre) leaving only his iconic half-mask as a symbolic reminder of his continuing omnipotence on stages throughout the world: 149 cities across 86 countries. Follow that. Lloyd Webber has.
It’s 10 years on from the fabled “disappearance” and five minutes walk from Her Majesty’s to the Adelphi Theatre where Phantom 2 Love Never Dies is in the final stages of preparation. The man himself – Lloyd Webber, that is – escorts me into the gutted auditorium where an army of technicians and banks of computer screens are rather more suggestive of space exploration than musical theatre. The orchestra will be in situ for the first time and in a couple of hours the show’s big opener will see Coney Island, New York, rise from the ashes of one of its countless fires and reanimate to the strains of a sumptuous bitter-sweet waltz in the grand tradition of Lloyd Webber’s great idol Richard Rodgers’ Carousel.
The Coney Island setting came out of years of think-tanking involving personalities as diverse as Frederick “The Jackal” Forsyth, Ben Elton, the show’s lyricist Glenn Slater and director Jack O’Brien of whom Lloyd Webber says “Anyone directing Stoppard’s The Coast of Utopia, Puccini’s Trittico, and Hairspray in one year is someone you have to meet.” Actually it was Ben Elton’s idea to carry all of the original characters forward to the sequel. Their identity was already well established globally, he said, and introducing major new characters into the mix would only muddy the waters. He was right.
So who exactly wrote the book? “Well, with a largely through-sung show it’s harder to say because everybody, the whole creative team, are chipping in with ideas. But obviously once Glenn Slater, our lyricist, came on board and the words themselves started flowing then everything began falling into place and the Coney Island setting became more and more dramatically appealing.”
Coney Island in 1907 was pretty much the eighth wonder of the world. It was the mother of amusement parks, the only good reason, said Freud, for making the long trip across the Atlantic. It was somewhere the Phantom, still pining for his one true love Christine Daaé, could fit right in – a decadent playground of freak shows, escapologists, illusionists, and great showmen. It also happened to be the age of Vaudeville. As settings for musicals go this one was a no-brainer. But establishing Coney Island in the minds and imaginations of audiences for whom it was probably nothing more than the name of some faded fairground was the challenge that eventually gave rise to the show’s dramatic opening.
And there’s a rather nice link here between Phantom’s original designer, the late, lamented, Maria Bjornson – whose famous gold proscenium sculptures brought the Paris Opera to Her Majesty’s Theatre – and Bob Crowley who spirits Coney Island’s world-beating rollercoaster from the mists of time and brings the seedy boardwalk to life before our very eyes. Lloyd Webber recalls that when Coney Island was first mentioned it was Bjornson who excitedly hit upon the idea that the Phantom could now reside in one of Coney’s skyscraping towers. From subterranean to high-rise living – a nice twist. From there he could truly be master of all he surveyed. And so at the start of Love Never Dies he has sent for his songbird Christine who travels to New York with her rather dull husband Raoul (remember him?) and son Gustave not really knowing but surely suspecting who might be behind an invitation for her to perform at Coney Island’s newest attraction Phantasma.
Lloyd Webber’s long-held obsession with this project is matched only by the Phantom’s for Christine (remember it was the second Mrs. Lloyd Webber, Sarah Brightman, who created the role) and as we retire to a quiet room over Rules Restaurant he makes no apologies for being the controlling force behind it. It’s the principal reason why his shows are “through-sung”. He’s not happy if the music isn’t driving the evening.
“If you just want ten songs to fit somebody else’s script then I’m not really the composer for that.” To that end his melodies are the dramatic and emotional fabric of his work and in Love Never Dies – undoubtedly one of his best scores – they are intricately woven.
“Once I had the plot it was fairly obvious to me that the first major melodic strand would have to be the Phantom’s song of yearning for Christine. Another decision I made quite early on was that the title song – which was something I originally wrote with this piece in mind and which was first sung by Kiri Te Kanawa - was going to be Christine’s big performance number and should be kept pretty much exclusively for that moment. Then there was the question of how I should handle the moment when Christine and the Phantom first meet again – and there I took the risky strategy of giving the stage to just them for the best part of 15 minutes. The themes that appear there – including the song “Once Upon Another Time” – would be carried forward towards the eventual dénouement.”
That song, that melody, typifies Lloyd Webber’s musical personality. If it was sung in German (as no doubt it will be one day) it could easily be mistaken for Franz Lehar. In fact I’d go so far as to characterise Lloyd Webber’s work a throwback to a bygone melodic style – more gracious, more opulent. His lyric ballads are surely unsurpassed since the heyday of Ivor Novello, Frederick Loewe and Richard Rodgers. The middle-eight or “release” of “Look with your heart”, another song from the show, is pure Rodgers; it sings and plays like an affectionate homage.
But it’s what I call the emotional memory of these melodies that give them such dramatic potency. The Phantom’s big number in Love Never Dies, “Till I hear you Sing”, is one of the best ballads Lloyd Webber has ever written – an absolute corker – but it stays with you because something about the ache within it won’t let go. When Christine agrees to sing for her mentor one last time she does so to the same tune and the frisson of recognition it engenders makes for a real goosebumps moment. That’s what great melodists do – hard to define but easy to recognise. It’s where the next note seems somehow inevitable the second after you’ve heard it. Rodgers once said “a great melody implies its own harmony” and Lloyd Webber certainly holds true to that maxim.
So where on earth here do these melodies come from? Interestingly he gives me a very similar answer to that which Leonard Bernstein gave me many years ago – that he really has no idea, that the tunes and their attendant harmonies have a habit of creeping up on him while he’s “musing” at the piano. He knows instinctively when he’s hit upon something – it might be the beginnings of a melody, a phrase or two or something more – and even if there is no immediate use for it he’ll write it down and keep it until the right moment calls it to mind. Sometimes the ideas come quickly and easily: “No Matter What” (from Whistle Down the Wind) was one of those – the cash registers were heard ringing before even the last note was down. At other times songs are very much “composed” in response to a specific motivation or brief. With Lloyd Webber’s Eurovision entry “It’s My Time” a catchy hook was not just desirable but required – and anybody that thinks that’s just a bog-standard tune should think again.
I am now doubly curious about the evolution of “ ‘Till I Hear You Sing”: “This took several drafts and it was the tiniest adjustments that made the difference”, says Lloyd Webber. “There are ways it could have gone which would have made it acceptable but ordinary but the use of the flattened 7th made it more intriguing. Other little things like dropping from the key of D to C major affect the listener in ways they can feel but might not be able to identify or explain. I instinctively know when something is right and when it isn’t.”
Actually Lloyd Webber’s melodies readily lend themselves to development but the man himself insists that he is not a symphonic composer but a dramatic one:
“The one thing I have always felt about musical theatre is that it is to an extraordinary degree about construction. Where I have come unstuck sometimes has mostly been to do with the stories not being quite right or not connecting with a contemporary audience. The Woman in White was a perfect example because the central premise, so shocking in Victorian times, didn’t turn a hair with audiences today. I firmly believe that even the greatest theatre songs ever written – like “Some Enchanted Evening” from South Pacific – wouldn’t be known today if they had been in the wrong place of the wrong theatrical vehicle. I once did an album years ago with Sarah Brightman called “The Songs That Got Away” and heard as a collection you’re thinking ‘this is one of the best musicals I’ve ever heard’ but for various reasons each of these songs was buried on account of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. So structure and context are everything – and if you look at a work like Britten’s Peter Grimes there isn’t a wasted or misplaced moment anywhere. As music theatre it’s perfect. Like act two of La Boheme. Anyone considering a career in musical theatre should study that.”
One of the key dramatic moments in Love Never Dies comes when the Phantom starts to recognise an innate kinship with the boy Gustave (echoes of Miles in Britten’s The Turn of the Screw). The tune the boy plays and sings at this point in the show is called “Beautiful” and its eerie Svengali-like chant – truly, subversively, “music of the night” - evolves into one of the principal leitmotifs of the score – quietly sensuous but potentially grand and visionary, too. I am reminded of a very accomplished orchestral piece Aurora by Andrew’s father William Lloyd Webber whose music brother Julian has tirelessly championed over the years.
“It’s interesting you mention that piece because I think it represented a sensuous side to my father’s personality that he was rarely able to show and that I am beginning to realise now was a big influence on me – particularly with this show. It’s made me think about why he was unable to show that side of himself and why I am?.”
There are still those among Lloyd Webber’s detractors who resolutely refuse to acknowledge his talent and doggedly insist that his huge international success is the product of clever global marketing and handfuls of formulaic hit songs liberally reprised. How does he feel about that?
“I always think of something Richard Rodgers said to me when I got to know him slightly towards the end of his life. He told me how depressed he’d got by the reviews for The King and I whose score was compared unfavourably with his previous shows. But even he – perhaps the most gifted popular melodist of them all – realised that it’s not always possible for audiences or for that matter critics to take in what they are hearing on a first or even second hearing. Musical theatre history is littered with bad reviews for now classic pieces. But there’s something else and that’s this: my job is to communicate with my audience and frankly should they be expected to recognise that the ordering of the poems in Cats, for instance, is very precisely structured to create a seamless narrative or that the opening of the show is a mock-fugue? It’s like what you say about the melodies: the effect of those repetitions, whether sung or in underscoring, has an emotional not an intellectual purpose.” The subliminal references to Phantom 1 in Love Never Dies will hopefully make aficionados smile.
After opening Love Never Dies Lloyd Webber has one more pressing date with reality TV when the nation-wide search for the little girl in the gingham frock –Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz – gathers momentum. Lloyd Webber believes that the classic movie has never successfully transferred to the stage because Arlen and Harburg’s songs were too thinly spread. The respective estates have given him special dispensation to create some additional numbers and if that means batting off a succession of Graham Norton “friends of Dorothy” jokes, then it’ll be well worth it. He’s hugely encouraged that these shows appear to have ignited a renewed enthusiasm for musical theatre among the teenage generation. The Wicked audience could now be ready for the prequel.
But back to the year’s biggest opening night. “I’m genuinely excited”, he says, “to see what people make of Love Never Dies because in so many ways it goes much further than the old Phantom did. Without giving anything away about the ending, it’s like I closed a door when I put the last notes down. I don’t think I’ll be able to go any further down this particular musical path – well, not for a while anyway.”
And long, long after that, will people still be humming “‘Till I Hear You Sing”? Of course, they will.
'Love Never Dies' opens at the Adelphi Theatre, London WC2, on 9 March (adelphitheatre.co.uk)
The best of Lloyd Webber: four timeless shows
The Phantom of the Opera
The composer's then wife Sarah Brightman was his muse for this piece a paean of love for her. She played the heroine Christine, a role which struck such a chord with some obsessive fans that they changed their name to Christine. The memorable 'coup de théâtre' of a chandelier seeming to crash into the audience so alarmed the security guard of one visiting royal that he bundled his charge to the floor.
Sunset Boulevard
His most underrated musical. Both dramatically and musically this merited a much longer run and more critical acclaim than it had. But it did give a plum role to actresses of a certain age, from Glenn Close to Petula Clark, with Faye Dunaway being famously rejected by Lloyd Webber.
Cats
Deciding to write a musical around TS Eliot's cat poems was an inspired decision. Trevor Nunn was inspired, too, in his lyrics for the showstopper "Memory", a genuinely moving number, with a little help from Eliot of course. Seats in the auditorium of the New London Theatre that moved added more thrill. It broke all records and only closed because it had reached audience saturation-point.
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
Lloyd Webber and his first lyricist Tim Rice at their joyous best. Their love of pure rock'n'roll is evident in this early collaboration, which contains a lot more humour than later works. Revivals reveal it as evergreen.
David Lister
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/features/the-man-behind-the-mask-andrew-lloyd-webber-on-his-new-musical-love-never-dies-1910817.html
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Love Never Dies: Laying the ghost of the Phantom
Jack O’Brien is the director of Love Never Dies, the follow-up to Phantom, the most successful show in history.
Published: 5:05PM GMT 23 Feb 2010
'You have no idea how much pressure I’m under between now and opening night!” Jack O’Brien tells me, with such a degree of drawling self-composure that you’d swear you could dangle him out of an upper-storey window and he’d barely bat an eyelid.
Actually, albeit that we’re sitting in a dressing-room backstage at the Adelphi theatre, an oasis of hushed tranquillity, I think I can take a reasonably shrewd guess at the frenetic scenario that awaits this seasoned American theatre and opera director the minute we shake hands and part ways.
O’Brien, 70, is tasked with bringing Love Never Dies to the London stage – after which it will open in New York and Melbourne, and, all being well, at various times after that, around the rest of the world, in the steps of the show that spawned it, The Phantom of the Opera.
This isn’t just the follow-up to the most successful musical yet penned by Andrew Lloyd Webber. It’s the follow-up to the most successful entertainment product in history. If you’re aware of nothing else about Phantom, you know it’s a huge hit, but the stats are awesome: it has enjoyed bigger takings than Star Wars, Titanic, and (so far) Avatar, with earnings of £2 billion; and it has been seen by over 100 million people in more than 25 countries.
Simply put, Love Never Dies is the sequel without equal. If anything, the pressure on O’Brien is greater than that faced by Harold Prince, entrusted with directing Phantom in 1986. As O’Brien reminds me: “The hot number that year was Chess [written by Lloyd Webber’s erstwhile regular collaborator Tim Rice]. Phantom wasn’t anticipated nearly as much as Chess was.”
This time, the anticipation isn’t only greater, it’s distinctly double-edged. Instead of drawing from Gaston Leroux’s 1911 novel about the deformed musical genius who haunts the Paris Opera House, the plot, which jumps from 1881 to 1907 and takes in the fairgrounds of Coney Island, has been conceived from scratch, with input from Frederick Forsyth’s 1999 novel The Phantom of Manhattan, Ben Elton and American lyricist Glenn Slater.
There are those – resentful of Phantom’s juggernaut unstoppability, smarting at its composer’s wealth, or simply unresponsive to Lloyd Webber’s lushly romantic, rock-tinged treatment of Leroux’s melodrama – who would relish the spectacle of Love Never Dies showing up dead on arrival.
Then there are those who are possibly as obsessed with the long-runner as its skulking anti-hero is with the virginal young soprano, Christine, who falls under his spell. And this die-hard contingent are cautious, sceptical, fearful even. At Her Majesty’s, I recently sat next to one such fan, a chap from Munich, who had seen Phantom 25 times, and swore he wouldn’t be seeing Love Never Dies until it had been given the thumbs-up by reviewers.
Towards the new show’s already lurking detractors, O’Brien displays scant regard. “People will say what they want without seeing it, and they’re almost always uninformed.” He sympathises, though, with the apprehension. “We’re not taking this lightly. I have said from the beginning: no one will thank us for doing this. We have to dot every i, and cross every t, in showing why we’re continuing to tell this story.’
Lloyd Webber’s motives, he maintains, are impeccable. “No one had him at gunpoint saying, 'Please come up with something.’ He has thought about this for over 20 years. It has been at the back of his mind, haunting him. If this just was about the franchise, he would have done it years ago. This is about something else.”
What that is, what drives Lloyd Webber’s desire to burrow deeper into the story, involves some guess-work that O’Brien is only partly prepared to indulge in. It hardly escaped notice at the premiere that, with Lloyd Webber’s then wife Sarah Brightman occupying the role of Christine, and Michael Crawford’s misfit Phantom akin to a composer, there was an element of self-portraiture about the business.
'I don’t think there’s any question about that,” he replies. “I don’t make assumptions, but you’d have to be very insensitive not to see this as a curious, mythological parallel universe. I’m aware that there’s a deeply personal template to which I’m not invited that feeds the stream.”
Further than that, he won’t go. But hand on heart, he’ll swear that Lloyd Webber – with lyricist Slater – has delivered the goods, and even trumped the original.
“I think the score is richer and more varied. The colours are more astonishing. There are vaudeville American elements and those great throbbing rock-opera moments, too. He uses everything at his disposal.’’
O’Brien launches into a full-blown aria of appreciation: “We’re in a new country, a new century. From gaslit Paris, we’ve moved into the age of electricity. So there’s a different perspective. We’re picking up, but we’re looking back. The fact that Erik, the Phantom, goes to Coney Island, which at that time was about five times more popular than Las Vegas is today, means that he’s now part of a landscape of people allowed to behave in an unconventional way. That gives him a chance to grow. I don’t know what anyone’s anticipation is but I bet anything they’re going to be really surprised by the direction the story goes in.”
As for the look of the thing, O’Brien adds: “Someone said to me, 'Is there a chandelier moment?’ [referring to the famous first-half climax in Phantom when a chandelier comes crashing to the ground]? I said: 'As far as I’m concerned, the whole evening is going to be a chandelier moment.’’’
For more than 20 years the artistic director of the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, California, O’Brien got this potentially mega-lucrative gig almost by chance – meeting Lloyd Webber for a drink in Covent Garden two and a half years ago, while supervising the hit London transfer of Hairspray.
“We had such fun talking, that I got involved in the creation of it at that point.” In his time, O’Brien has had the odd brush with flops – his own musical, The Selling of the President, closed after five performances in 1972. Yet I realise that not once while we’ve been locked in conversation has the slightest look of fear or doubt entered his eyes. This guy knows something we don’t. Yet.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-features/7300428/Love-Never-Dies-laying-the-ghost-of-the-Phantom.html
Published: 5:05PM GMT 23 Feb 2010
'You have no idea how much pressure I’m under between now and opening night!” Jack O’Brien tells me, with such a degree of drawling self-composure that you’d swear you could dangle him out of an upper-storey window and he’d barely bat an eyelid.
Actually, albeit that we’re sitting in a dressing-room backstage at the Adelphi theatre, an oasis of hushed tranquillity, I think I can take a reasonably shrewd guess at the frenetic scenario that awaits this seasoned American theatre and opera director the minute we shake hands and part ways.
O’Brien, 70, is tasked with bringing Love Never Dies to the London stage – after which it will open in New York and Melbourne, and, all being well, at various times after that, around the rest of the world, in the steps of the show that spawned it, The Phantom of the Opera.
This isn’t just the follow-up to the most successful musical yet penned by Andrew Lloyd Webber. It’s the follow-up to the most successful entertainment product in history. If you’re aware of nothing else about Phantom, you know it’s a huge hit, but the stats are awesome: it has enjoyed bigger takings than Star Wars, Titanic, and (so far) Avatar, with earnings of £2 billion; and it has been seen by over 100 million people in more than 25 countries.
Simply put, Love Never Dies is the sequel without equal. If anything, the pressure on O’Brien is greater than that faced by Harold Prince, entrusted with directing Phantom in 1986. As O’Brien reminds me: “The hot number that year was Chess [written by Lloyd Webber’s erstwhile regular collaborator Tim Rice]. Phantom wasn’t anticipated nearly as much as Chess was.”
This time, the anticipation isn’t only greater, it’s distinctly double-edged. Instead of drawing from Gaston Leroux’s 1911 novel about the deformed musical genius who haunts the Paris Opera House, the plot, which jumps from 1881 to 1907 and takes in the fairgrounds of Coney Island, has been conceived from scratch, with input from Frederick Forsyth’s 1999 novel The Phantom of Manhattan, Ben Elton and American lyricist Glenn Slater.
There are those – resentful of Phantom’s juggernaut unstoppability, smarting at its composer’s wealth, or simply unresponsive to Lloyd Webber’s lushly romantic, rock-tinged treatment of Leroux’s melodrama – who would relish the spectacle of Love Never Dies showing up dead on arrival.
Then there are those who are possibly as obsessed with the long-runner as its skulking anti-hero is with the virginal young soprano, Christine, who falls under his spell. And this die-hard contingent are cautious, sceptical, fearful even. At Her Majesty’s, I recently sat next to one such fan, a chap from Munich, who had seen Phantom 25 times, and swore he wouldn’t be seeing Love Never Dies until it had been given the thumbs-up by reviewers.
Towards the new show’s already lurking detractors, O’Brien displays scant regard. “People will say what they want without seeing it, and they’re almost always uninformed.” He sympathises, though, with the apprehension. “We’re not taking this lightly. I have said from the beginning: no one will thank us for doing this. We have to dot every i, and cross every t, in showing why we’re continuing to tell this story.’
Lloyd Webber’s motives, he maintains, are impeccable. “No one had him at gunpoint saying, 'Please come up with something.’ He has thought about this for over 20 years. It has been at the back of his mind, haunting him. If this just was about the franchise, he would have done it years ago. This is about something else.”
What that is, what drives Lloyd Webber’s desire to burrow deeper into the story, involves some guess-work that O’Brien is only partly prepared to indulge in. It hardly escaped notice at the premiere that, with Lloyd Webber’s then wife Sarah Brightman occupying the role of Christine, and Michael Crawford’s misfit Phantom akin to a composer, there was an element of self-portraiture about the business.
'I don’t think there’s any question about that,” he replies. “I don’t make assumptions, but you’d have to be very insensitive not to see this as a curious, mythological parallel universe. I’m aware that there’s a deeply personal template to which I’m not invited that feeds the stream.”
Further than that, he won’t go. But hand on heart, he’ll swear that Lloyd Webber – with lyricist Slater – has delivered the goods, and even trumped the original.
“I think the score is richer and more varied. The colours are more astonishing. There are vaudeville American elements and those great throbbing rock-opera moments, too. He uses everything at his disposal.’’
O’Brien launches into a full-blown aria of appreciation: “We’re in a new country, a new century. From gaslit Paris, we’ve moved into the age of electricity. So there’s a different perspective. We’re picking up, but we’re looking back. The fact that Erik, the Phantom, goes to Coney Island, which at that time was about five times more popular than Las Vegas is today, means that he’s now part of a landscape of people allowed to behave in an unconventional way. That gives him a chance to grow. I don’t know what anyone’s anticipation is but I bet anything they’re going to be really surprised by the direction the story goes in.”
As for the look of the thing, O’Brien adds: “Someone said to me, 'Is there a chandelier moment?’ [referring to the famous first-half climax in Phantom when a chandelier comes crashing to the ground]? I said: 'As far as I’m concerned, the whole evening is going to be a chandelier moment.’’’
For more than 20 years the artistic director of the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, California, O’Brien got this potentially mega-lucrative gig almost by chance – meeting Lloyd Webber for a drink in Covent Garden two and a half years ago, while supervising the hit London transfer of Hairspray.
“We had such fun talking, that I got involved in the creation of it at that point.” In his time, O’Brien has had the odd brush with flops – his own musical, The Selling of the President, closed after five performances in 1972. Yet I realise that not once while we’ve been locked in conversation has the slightest look of fear or doubt entered his eyes. This guy knows something we don’t. Yet.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-features/7300428/Love-Never-Dies-laying-the-ghost-of-the-Phantom.html
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Love Never Dies thoughts, from Broadway World, West End section
Love Never Dies -Adelphi Theatre, London 2010
Posted On:2/23/10 at 06:17
One of the biggest flaws of the show, not really mentioned previous, is how it negates the intentions and character plot advancement of the original. SPOILERS AHEAD: At first, when it appeared Raoul had little interest in his boy I thought, ah, the Phantom must have raped Christine when he had her mesmerized, Gustof is his son. Odd but sorta interesting...then they meet in her boudoir in the next scene...and...apparently, sweet naive Raoul-loving Christine, sought out the Phantom the night before her wedding and had sex with him (!). Okay, I know there are those cat ladies who see things oddly, but Christine NEVER loved the Phantom. She loved Raoul. She never sang a love duet with the Phantom. She sang two+ with Raoul. The Phantom was a homicidal sociopath she took pity on and kissed to save her love that the Phantom was about to KILL!!!!!! Yet we are to believe that one kiss had so much in it, on her wedding eve she abandoned her childhood love to crawl under the sewers and schtup the deformed guy? Again, I know there is some revisionist memory that "Phantom" is a love story between the Phantom and Christine...but there is nothing to it. Not a bit. Its beauty is the unrequited love the Phantom has for this girl. She was sweet enough to feel pity, that's it. Now, of course, realistically, Raoul might have become a drunk and their love faded. But please. This is a musical fairy tale. I don't want to think all the sturm and drang from the first musical was all for nought. Among a host of horrible, horrible atrocities in "Love Never Dies" this rewriting of the first show is one of its worst.
http://westend.broadwayworld.com/board/readmessage.php?page=4&thread=1011439&boardid=3
Posted On:2/23/10 at 06:17
One of the biggest flaws of the show, not really mentioned previous, is how it negates the intentions and character plot advancement of the original. SPOILERS AHEAD: At first, when it appeared Raoul had little interest in his boy I thought, ah, the Phantom must have raped Christine when he had her mesmerized, Gustof is his son. Odd but sorta interesting...then they meet in her boudoir in the next scene...and...apparently, sweet naive Raoul-loving Christine, sought out the Phantom the night before her wedding and had sex with him (!). Okay, I know there are those cat ladies who see things oddly, but Christine NEVER loved the Phantom. She loved Raoul. She never sang a love duet with the Phantom. She sang two+ with Raoul. The Phantom was a homicidal sociopath she took pity on and kissed to save her love that the Phantom was about to KILL!!!!!! Yet we are to believe that one kiss had so much in it, on her wedding eve she abandoned her childhood love to crawl under the sewers and schtup the deformed guy? Again, I know there is some revisionist memory that "Phantom" is a love story between the Phantom and Christine...but there is nothing to it. Not a bit. Its beauty is the unrequited love the Phantom has for this girl. She was sweet enough to feel pity, that's it. Now, of course, realistically, Raoul might have become a drunk and their love faded. But please. This is a musical fairy tale. I don't want to think all the sturm and drang from the first musical was all for nought. Among a host of horrible, horrible atrocities in "Love Never Dies" this rewriting of the first show is one of its worst.
http://westend.broadwayworld.com/board/readmessage.php?page=4&thread=1011439&boardid=3
Review: You Will Believe ‘Love Never Dies’ After Seeing This…
Mon, Feb 22, 2010
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Love Never Dies opened on Monday, 22 February 2010 at London’s Adelphi Theatre to a packed house full of excited theatregoers and Andrew Lloyd Webber himself. The audience was all a buzz with anticipation. It seems that a lot of time had passed since this new show was announced formally at the press launch on 8 October 2009 at London’s Her Majesty’s Theatre but it is here now and is a must see! The world premiere performance of Love Never Dies is scheduled for 9 March 2010.
It is unimaginable all the people required to make a production like this but a thank you goes out to all involved for making such a remarkable and history-making musical. Bravo. Andrew Lloyd Webber must be very proud seeing this idea finally come to life.
It opens on the pier at Coney Island on a dreary, cold, moonlit night with Madame Giry (played by Liz Robertson) reminiscing of Coney Island in its day. The sound effects complimented the set with seagulls and the wind blowing. Even the moon turned into a ferris wheel – how imaginative. The visual effects were stunning as screens and projections enhanced / portrayed what she was thinking about. The tall man, acrobats, fire baton performer, trapeze artists and the circus acts were terrific and their costumes authentic looking. This is just the beginning as it only gets better.
Before I go further into the story, I must comment on the fabulous music written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and conducted by Simon Lee. It intensified and supported what was being performed by the talented actors. Be prepared to get shivers when you hear The Phantom (passionately and perfectly played by Ramin Karimloo) sing ‘Til I Hear You Sing. All the songs are special but my three favorite are ‘Til I Hear You Sing, Look with Your Heart, and Love Never Dies.
The wonderful actors are commended on delivering such convincing performances. A list of the main characters follows but it is not to disregard the ensemble who all add to a successful show.
The Phantom is absolutely perfectly played by the talented Ramin Karimloo. The beautiful Sierra Bogges makes her West end debut playing Christine Daae. Christine’s husband, Raoul, is played by Joseph Millson. As mentioned above, Madam Giry (manager) is played by Liz Robertson and her daughter (and performer), Meg Giry is played by Summer Strallen. The Phantom’s devoted trio Fleck, Squelch, and Gangle were played by Niamh Perry, Adam Pearce, and Jami Reid-Quarrel. And last, but not least… Christine’s son, Gustave (the only new character) is played by a multitude of children but on this night, the character was wonderfully played by Harry Child who sang with a pure voice.
I must reiterate Ramin Karimloo plays such a passionate character. You can feel it in his songs, you can see it in his actions. He is absolutely brilliant. Sierra Boggess is beautiful and delicate with a softer voice. All of the actors are talented in their own right, of course. It is easy to see why everyone got a standing ovation.
This may be a continuation of the most famous love story but it is a separate story all it’s own. Taking place 10 years after the infamous Paris Opera House, it offers one surprise after another. The Phantom is a Man in his own right having created a mysterious and intriguing world on Coney Island, his Phantasma. He sends for Christine to perform there. Due to monetary problems, Christine accepts and brings her husband and son with her, no one realizing who Mr Y is. Her husband seems like a pompous jerk who complains about everything but her child seems to share her qualities and is kind and innocent. Just when they think no one is there to meet them at the dock, a ‘glass’ horse and a seemingly empty carriage with a glass skeleton driver pulls up. The door opens and The Phantom’s Devoted Trio get out to greet them and take them to their master. The visual imagery projected was terrific as it showed ‘the carriage’ travelling over a bridge and a map showing where they were going from and travelling to. The combination of projection, the actual scenery/stage set, and live actors complimented one another and helped to portray the story.
My first opinion of Raoul is confirmed by the way he treats his son and talks to his wife soon after they arrive at the Hotel. He does nothing but complain and his drinking problem evident (which is added to by the gambling problem referred to more than once). Their son, Gustave, has a pure voice to match his pure heart and it is easy to see that Christine loves him dearly. It’s even apparent that she loves her husband and is devoted to him though one wonders why. Raoul leaves for ‘fresh air’ (at the local bar) and Gustave goes to bed after his mother comforts him when he questions if his father loves him. Then Christine, left alone, plays the musical toy that was given to her son and recognizes the music. She is standing there obviously feeling a presence as The Phantom enters from the balcony. They sing the ‘why’ and ‘what if’ game. The love, history, and attraction is so transparent but she remains the dutiful wife. By the way, the detail in the hotel room, particularly the door / balcony was splendid. Gustave awakens from a nightmare and meets his mother’s ‘friend’, Mr Y (the man who brought them there).
The next day, Christine and Gustave go backstage at Phantasma for business-related reasons when who should she run into but Meg Giry. They are joined by Raoul and Madame Giry where they have a surprise reunion. As they sing, Dear Old Friend, it is apparent that it is an awkward reunion and not a welcomed one especially for Meg and Madam Giry. This is when Raoul finds out who the boss is and he is not pleased about the news.
The Phantom calls for Gustave and his devoted trio brings the boy to his room. The boy is intrigued with all the inventions / gadgets (like the walking skeleton with lady’s legs) which pushes a table across the stage). He also plays the piano for The Phantom. The Phantom marvels at his musical talent and enjoys that Gustave is at home there. There is some important news that is revealed before the intermission and not something that makes everyone happy.
After the intermission, the Orchestra plays Entr’acte, a beautiful introduction to Part II. The rest of the scenes are as good as the first half. There are humorous parts throughout the musical… one being in the bar when The Phantom (pretending to be a bartender) reveals himself to Raoul. That was a good scene between the two men in Christine’s life. I will say that Christine obviously will have to make a choice but I won’t say any more. I don’t want to spoil anything so will just continue that it is full of intrigue, surprise, laughter, tears, and an undying love. The ending was very unexpected but again I can’t divulge more because I want you to go and enjoy it. I want you to be surprised and moved. Whether you’re a hopeless romantic or a sceptic of love or whether you just want to see how the story continues… you’ll want to see Love Never Dies. Go, take it in, feel it, and enjoy!
*************************************************************************************
S P O I L E R A L E R T
*************************************************************************************
If you want to know more, please read on… if not, PLEASE READ NO FURTHER!!!
The Phantom figures out before intermission that Gustave is his son (which I also figured out so may not be a surprise to you). At the altercation at the bar, the men make an agreement… if Christine performs that evening, Raoul will leave. If she does not perform, The Phantom will let her be and will pay all of Raoul’s debts. It is touch and go what she will do as she is almost pulled in by Raoul’s words. Her love for The Phantom though is too strong and at the last minute while on the stage, she starts to sing. She sings Love Never Dies… Raoul surprisingly honors the deal made or maybe just realizes he has no chance and leaves. She has chosen her true love. Just when you delightedly think there will be a happy-ever-after ending… there is more – Meg has taken Gustave. She is saddened by the realization that her boss loves another and feels used for all the years she gave to him. She is beside herself with grief. After a chase / search on the streets of Coney Island, they are found on the pier. Gustave is scared. Meg lets him go and he flees to the protective arms of his mother. Meg then pulls out a gun… The Phantom’s gun and points it at him while The Phantom and her mother try to talk her out of doing anything stupid or dangerous. She then turns the gun to herself when The Phantom talks her (or sings her) out of doing any self-harm… you think everything is fine until he accidentally calls her Christine at the end. That pushes her over the edge and she almost unknowingly fires the gun at Christine’s direction. Yes, Christine is shot to the dismay of all, even her shooter whom she forgives before she dies. She also reveals to Gustave who his father is and helps him accept it. The Phantom and Christine share a love-filled, emotional kiss and embrace before she tragically dies. The scene ends with Gustave removing his father’s mask and touching his face – a form of acceptance and a moving moment between father and son indicating that they will be okay.
by Ann Kamran (stagetalk.co.uk)
http://www.stagetalk.co.uk/reviews/review-you-will-believe-love-never-dies-after-seeing-this/
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Love Never Dies opened on Monday, 22 February 2010 at London’s Adelphi Theatre to a packed house full of excited theatregoers and Andrew Lloyd Webber himself. The audience was all a buzz with anticipation. It seems that a lot of time had passed since this new show was announced formally at the press launch on 8 October 2009 at London’s Her Majesty’s Theatre but it is here now and is a must see! The world premiere performance of Love Never Dies is scheduled for 9 March 2010.
It is unimaginable all the people required to make a production like this but a thank you goes out to all involved for making such a remarkable and history-making musical. Bravo. Andrew Lloyd Webber must be very proud seeing this idea finally come to life.
It opens on the pier at Coney Island on a dreary, cold, moonlit night with Madame Giry (played by Liz Robertson) reminiscing of Coney Island in its day. The sound effects complimented the set with seagulls and the wind blowing. Even the moon turned into a ferris wheel – how imaginative. The visual effects were stunning as screens and projections enhanced / portrayed what she was thinking about. The tall man, acrobats, fire baton performer, trapeze artists and the circus acts were terrific and their costumes authentic looking. This is just the beginning as it only gets better.
Before I go further into the story, I must comment on the fabulous music written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and conducted by Simon Lee. It intensified and supported what was being performed by the talented actors. Be prepared to get shivers when you hear The Phantom (passionately and perfectly played by Ramin Karimloo) sing ‘Til I Hear You Sing. All the songs are special but my three favorite are ‘Til I Hear You Sing, Look with Your Heart, and Love Never Dies.
The wonderful actors are commended on delivering such convincing performances. A list of the main characters follows but it is not to disregard the ensemble who all add to a successful show.
The Phantom is absolutely perfectly played by the talented Ramin Karimloo. The beautiful Sierra Bogges makes her West end debut playing Christine Daae. Christine’s husband, Raoul, is played by Joseph Millson. As mentioned above, Madam Giry (manager) is played by Liz Robertson and her daughter (and performer), Meg Giry is played by Summer Strallen. The Phantom’s devoted trio Fleck, Squelch, and Gangle were played by Niamh Perry, Adam Pearce, and Jami Reid-Quarrel. And last, but not least… Christine’s son, Gustave (the only new character) is played by a multitude of children but on this night, the character was wonderfully played by Harry Child who sang with a pure voice.
I must reiterate Ramin Karimloo plays such a passionate character. You can feel it in his songs, you can see it in his actions. He is absolutely brilliant. Sierra Boggess is beautiful and delicate with a softer voice. All of the actors are talented in their own right, of course. It is easy to see why everyone got a standing ovation.
This may be a continuation of the most famous love story but it is a separate story all it’s own. Taking place 10 years after the infamous Paris Opera House, it offers one surprise after another. The Phantom is a Man in his own right having created a mysterious and intriguing world on Coney Island, his Phantasma. He sends for Christine to perform there. Due to monetary problems, Christine accepts and brings her husband and son with her, no one realizing who Mr Y is. Her husband seems like a pompous jerk who complains about everything but her child seems to share her qualities and is kind and innocent. Just when they think no one is there to meet them at the dock, a ‘glass’ horse and a seemingly empty carriage with a glass skeleton driver pulls up. The door opens and The Phantom’s Devoted Trio get out to greet them and take them to their master. The visual imagery projected was terrific as it showed ‘the carriage’ travelling over a bridge and a map showing where they were going from and travelling to. The combination of projection, the actual scenery/stage set, and live actors complimented one another and helped to portray the story.
My first opinion of Raoul is confirmed by the way he treats his son and talks to his wife soon after they arrive at the Hotel. He does nothing but complain and his drinking problem evident (which is added to by the gambling problem referred to more than once). Their son, Gustave, has a pure voice to match his pure heart and it is easy to see that Christine loves him dearly. It’s even apparent that she loves her husband and is devoted to him though one wonders why. Raoul leaves for ‘fresh air’ (at the local bar) and Gustave goes to bed after his mother comforts him when he questions if his father loves him. Then Christine, left alone, plays the musical toy that was given to her son and recognizes the music. She is standing there obviously feeling a presence as The Phantom enters from the balcony. They sing the ‘why’ and ‘what if’ game. The love, history, and attraction is so transparent but she remains the dutiful wife. By the way, the detail in the hotel room, particularly the door / balcony was splendid. Gustave awakens from a nightmare and meets his mother’s ‘friend’, Mr Y (the man who brought them there).
The next day, Christine and Gustave go backstage at Phantasma for business-related reasons when who should she run into but Meg Giry. They are joined by Raoul and Madame Giry where they have a surprise reunion. As they sing, Dear Old Friend, it is apparent that it is an awkward reunion and not a welcomed one especially for Meg and Madam Giry. This is when Raoul finds out who the boss is and he is not pleased about the news.
The Phantom calls for Gustave and his devoted trio brings the boy to his room. The boy is intrigued with all the inventions / gadgets (like the walking skeleton with lady’s legs) which pushes a table across the stage). He also plays the piano for The Phantom. The Phantom marvels at his musical talent and enjoys that Gustave is at home there. There is some important news that is revealed before the intermission and not something that makes everyone happy.
After the intermission, the Orchestra plays Entr’acte, a beautiful introduction to Part II. The rest of the scenes are as good as the first half. There are humorous parts throughout the musical… one being in the bar when The Phantom (pretending to be a bartender) reveals himself to Raoul. That was a good scene between the two men in Christine’s life. I will say that Christine obviously will have to make a choice but I won’t say any more. I don’t want to spoil anything so will just continue that it is full of intrigue, surprise, laughter, tears, and an undying love. The ending was very unexpected but again I can’t divulge more because I want you to go and enjoy it. I want you to be surprised and moved. Whether you’re a hopeless romantic or a sceptic of love or whether you just want to see how the story continues… you’ll want to see Love Never Dies. Go, take it in, feel it, and enjoy!
*************************************************************************************
S P O I L E R A L E R T
*************************************************************************************
If you want to know more, please read on… if not, PLEASE READ NO FURTHER!!!
The Phantom figures out before intermission that Gustave is his son (which I also figured out so may not be a surprise to you). At the altercation at the bar, the men make an agreement… if Christine performs that evening, Raoul will leave. If she does not perform, The Phantom will let her be and will pay all of Raoul’s debts. It is touch and go what she will do as she is almost pulled in by Raoul’s words. Her love for The Phantom though is too strong and at the last minute while on the stage, she starts to sing. She sings Love Never Dies… Raoul surprisingly honors the deal made or maybe just realizes he has no chance and leaves. She has chosen her true love. Just when you delightedly think there will be a happy-ever-after ending… there is more – Meg has taken Gustave. She is saddened by the realization that her boss loves another and feels used for all the years she gave to him. She is beside herself with grief. After a chase / search on the streets of Coney Island, they are found on the pier. Gustave is scared. Meg lets him go and he flees to the protective arms of his mother. Meg then pulls out a gun… The Phantom’s gun and points it at him while The Phantom and her mother try to talk her out of doing anything stupid or dangerous. She then turns the gun to herself when The Phantom talks her (or sings her) out of doing any self-harm… you think everything is fine until he accidentally calls her Christine at the end. That pushes her over the edge and she almost unknowingly fires the gun at Christine’s direction. Yes, Christine is shot to the dismay of all, even her shooter whom she forgives before she dies. She also reveals to Gustave who his father is and helps him accept it. The Phantom and Christine share a love-filled, emotional kiss and embrace before she tragically dies. The scene ends with Gustave removing his father’s mask and touching his face – a form of acceptance and a moving moment between father and son indicating that they will be okay.
by Ann Kamran (stagetalk.co.uk)
http://www.stagetalk.co.uk/reviews/review-you-will-believe-love-never-dies-after-seeing-this/
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Andrew Lloyd Webber interview
His 1986 musical gave the world its darkest hero and broke every box office record going. Now, amid feverish anticipation, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ‘Phantom’ is returning. But is his creator coping with the pressure?
By Nigel Farndale
Published: 5:05PM GMT 17 Feb 2010
There are two Andrew Lloyd Webbers, separated by a hyphen. There is Lord Lloyd-Webber, the mogul who owns seven London theatres, collects vintage burgundy, Pre-Raphaelite paintings, and wives (well, three of them anyway). He is a Tory. A man of refined taste. Establishment to his bones.
And then there is Andrew Lloyd Webber without a hyphen. He was so precocious as a child he could compose almost before he could walk. He won a scholarship to Westminster School and an exhibition to read history at Magdalene College, Oxford, only to drop out after one term in order to pursue his dream of writing musicals.
This must have seemed like an act of rebellion bordering on patricide, given that his father was a professor of classical composition at the Royal College of Music. (And come to think of it, even Lloyd Webber’s Tory tendencies have a rebellious cast to them, given that his domineering mother, a piano teacher, was a socialist.)
Lloyd Webber without a hyphen seems to have been impulsive, driven, contrary and perhaps a little socially awkward and gauche, but a man with keen populist instincts and no qualms about pandering to the sort of middle-brow tastes that might have made his father shudder.
So there’s the paradox, then. Not only is he a nonconformist Establishment figure, he is also a slightly vulgar aesthete. And the two identities are separated by a hyphen that was added in 1997 to avoid confusion when he became Baron Lloyd-Webber of Sydmonton. As he might put it, Lloyd ain’t his first name.
In terms of his vocabulary, by the way, he does have a tendency to strain for the colloquial, perhaps in compensation for his received pronunciation – as well as saying ‘ain’t’, he will refer to a ‘beaker’ of wine, or his ‘PR honchos’, or his ‘grey matter’. Anyway, I think it is the Andrew Lloyd Webber without the hyphen that I meet in a rehearsal studio near Waterloo.
At 62, he looks trim and healthy. He is wearing jeans and a pale blue shirt. His hands are small, his grip light and, contrary to reputation, his eye contact steady. His manner is polite but impatient and distracted, and a habit to talk over the top of people gives him the air of a busy man, one who really shouldn’t have had that second cup of coffee.
Prior to this meeting I have spent a long morning at his office in Covent Garden listening, under armed guard it seemed, to a recording of the much-anticipated ‘continuation’ – not sequel – of The Phantom of the Opera. Called Love Never Dies, it takes up the phantom’s story 10 years on, when he has left his lair under the Paris Opera in order to haunt the fairgrounds of Coney Island, Brooklyn.
The musical, which begins previewing at the Adelphi Theatre next week, is to my ears more vaudevillian than operatic, with recurring background hints of a fairground barrel organ. But the overall mood seems similar to Phantom, a mixture of soaring ballads and tender love songs.
Predictably enough, ticket sales have been more than healthy. There are a lot of Phantom fans out there, you see. A lot. In terms of revenue, it is the most successful entertainment of all time, way ahead of the combined world tours of the Rolling Stones, even ahead of Star Wars, Titanic and , so far, Avatar. It has taken nearly £2 billion.
Lloyd Webber began planning what would become Love Never Dies back in 1997. Dozens of ideas were chewed over. At one point even Frederick Forsyth and Ben Elton were called in to give it a go, though not together.
The problem was not the music; Lloyd Webber writes quickly. ‘I often think of random melodies,’ he tells me. ‘And I pretty much hear in my head what I want to do with the orchestra as I’m writing on the piano. But the most important thing with musical theatre is the story. That is where you have to start. With the exception of Cats, which is an oddball, it is always the story that is the most important aspect and when they haven’t worked, as with Woman in White, it was because the story wasn’t right.’
His breakthrough came when he worked out the only place the Phantom could hide in 1907 without people staring at his face. ‘The answer was Coney Island, where freaks can walk around without being noticed. Freud gave the best quote about the place: ‘The only reason to go to the United States is to go to Coney Island.’ So this made the story about vaudeville instead of opera.
Like the original Phantom, Love Never Dies reflects Lloyd Webber’s highly romantic sensibility. ‘This one has taken romance as far as it will go,’ he says. ‘This felt like coming back to my own turf. When it was finally unlocked for me after 20 years of attempts I felt I was coming back to a character I knew well.
'If you looked at the logic of the original, the whole thing falls apart. I remember Hal Prince saying we have to start one scene before the last has ended and let the music overlap – and then just go for it. We don’t need to explain all this because the audience will get it. The story of the Phantom is one of rock masquerading as opera. The passions in Love Never Dies are rock passions.’
To what does Lloyd Webber attribute the enduring appeal of Phantom? ‘It’s to do with sexuality and, well, I remember 20 years ago going to a charity event Elton was giving in a restaurant and I found myself, to my great joy, sitting among five of the world’s most beautiful supermodels and they were all talking about Phantom because it had just opened.
'I think it was Elle Macpherson who said: “If you ask X she is worried about her nose and if you ask Y she is worried she isn’t tall enough and Z thinks she is too skinny. We are all of us insecure about our looks.” And I think that’s it. That is why people identify with the Phantom. Everyone has something about themselves they would like to change.’
To say there is anticipation for the new show is to understate. Is he nervous that Love Never Dies might not live up to expectation? ‘There is pressure. I can’t tell you whether Love Never Dies is of its time, because it ain’t Legally Blonde or Hairspray. All I can say is that I think the story is strong and the lyrics are the best I’ve had since Tim, if you take TS Eliot out of the equation.’
His musical Cats, it should be explained, the one that was a fixture in the West End for 21 years, was based on words by TS Eliot. And the Tim he refers to is Sir Tim Rice.
Rice was the reason the 17-year-old Lloyd Webber dropped out of Oxford. It was a life-changing encounter. Sir Tim was five years older, taller, longer haired, more urbane and socially confident. He also had an ability to write wry and catchy lyrics that electrified the young Andrew.
When these were combined with Lloyd Webber’s instantly memorable and charming melodies, a chemical combustion took place. The obvious comparison of a librettist meeting his perfect composer is when Gilbert met Sullivan, but a better one might be Bernie Taupin and Elton John.
Either way, Rice and Lloyd Webber clicked and within a few years they had produced three of the most successful musicals of all time: Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita. Then, at the height of their creative powers, they fell out.
As Lloyd Webber is the richest person in the British music industry, ahead even of Sir Paul McCartney, it is safe to assume he is not just doing Love Never Dies for the money. He can’t still be hungry can he? I mean, if he still needs the sense of affirmation that comes with success, after all these years of it, isn’t that a form of failure?
‘Why am I still hungry? I think it is just that I love the collaborative element. You depend on each other in a project like this. It is a shared adventure between the cast, director, designer, costume maker, lighting engineer, choreographer. One ingredient could be wrong and a great piece of work will disappear.’
The comment is a reminder that, for all his success, Lloyd Webber has known failure. In fact, he hasn’t had a new hit for a while, and by his standards Woman in White, The Beautiful Game and Whistle Down the Wind constitute flops.
Could it be that his recent brush with mortality, last autumn he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, has focused his mind? To paraphrase a certain mid-market tabloid, Love never dies – but he nearly did.
‘Yes and I did nearly die when I saw that headline because the point about my illness was that I didn’t nearly die, because we caught it in time. I kept having to get up to pee in the night and so I went to have a checkup and, luckily, they spotted it. Men over 50 should really have a prostate check regularly. It is the most common form of cancer in men and if you can get it before it angles off into other parts of the body, it’s not a problem.’
He had a prostatectomy in November and looks very healthy now. ‘Yes,’ he says with a grin. ‘I am. In the circumstances.’ He has an endearingly self-deprecating anecdote to share about the time he was told to leave The London Clinic by a side door via a row of huge dustbins, in order to avoid a gang of paparazzi that had assembled outside the hospital’s front door.
He assumed they were for him but next morning awoke to vast coverage of Amy Winehouse leaving the same place having had, allegedly, a breast enhancement.
He speaks about how he accepts the operation may leave you with an incontinence problem, but that this gets better every day. It can also leave you impotent, but not necessarily. As for the infertility, he is not worried about that because he has five children.
It must have given him intimations of mortality though. ‘Yes, it makes you think.’ What is it all for? That sort of thing? ‘No, more that it makes you realise who your real friends are. I was struck by the number of people who were my friends a long time ago who were the most supportive. Tim, for example. He rang my wife every day. And my first wife Sarah came to see me and she happened to arrive on the same day as Tim and they were getting on like a house on fire, catching up and talking about old times.’
He grins again. ‘There they were talking away by the bed and I might as well not have been there! And then the phone went and it was Sarah Brightman and I thought this is not great timing so I said: “This is a little awkward Sarah, can I call you back?” It made me laugh.’ Sarah Brightman was known as Sarah Two.
Was he surprised to find himself on his third marriage by the time he reached his mid forties? ‘Well I’ve been married 20 years this time, quite a stretch. I’m very pleased that I am still very close to both my ex wives. Both of them have stayed at my place in Majorca this past year. At different times.’
I have to say, I am impressed by the way he has remained friendly with his exes be they in business or marriage. ‘Yes, Tim is such a good friend and Sarah was wonderful when I was ill. She heard the roughs for Love Never Dies before it was mixed in LA last summer and I was quite worried about playing it to her because, in a way, it would mean more to her than to me.’
His marriage to Brightman lasted six years and was played out in the spotlight, including the acrimony of the divorce. Was it a passionate affair to begin with? ‘I think with her it was more about the music.’
He makes himself a coffee and is adept at operating the complicated looking machine. I’m surprised given that he probably has butlers to do that at home.
‘We don’t have butlers. Obviously we have people who look after the houses, but I try not to run things formally. I have good people around me. My PA, my driver, but my best investment is my black cab which means you can go anywhere.’
When he says his cancer made him think, was that partly about the meaning of material possessions?
‘I don’t think I am that materialistic, actually. Obviously at home in the country the art collection is important but we have one big room in the middle of the house where we do everything, the television, the kitchen, everything. I like cooking so I always like to have the kitchen in the central place. Music, architecture and pictures have always been my passions, and all that material wealth has meant for me, is being able to have some of the pictures I liked.’
I try and get a measure of what he was like as a schoolboy. Was he serious? ‘I was a bit. I was passionate about architecture and so was considered an oddball. I could have been academic but I got bored. I think I was quite popular at prep school because they thought I was weird playing the violin, and then one day I got up and did a parody of the masters, six tunes, and after that they thought I had a sense of humour.’
Were his parents pushy? ‘I think my mother would have preferred it if I was more interested in history, but I wanted to plough my own furrow. My parents were supportive about me leaving Oxford, even though the family didn’t have any money. We didn’t have anything to fall back on. We have that now with our 18 year-old, who I have a feeling isn’t going to go down the university route. He’s got all his grades, but he’s been doing work experience and enjoying that. I’ll support him if I think he’s going to the right place.’
When Lloyd Webber was that age, the right place meant being alongside Tim Rice. ‘Yes once I met Tim I realised how few really good lyricists there were. I was aware of a chemistry between us but also an awareness that there was no one else around who had the sort of individuality he had. The turn of phrase he had was so quirky and individual. I had met no one who had come even remotely close to him.’
He talks about Sir Tim a lot. You get the feeling it was, in some ways, his most painful divorce. Was part of the problem that Tim’s heart wasn’t in music theatre? That he finds it a little, well, embarrassing? Wasn’t he always more interested in rock and pop?
‘I think that is true, though goodness knows, he’s made enough records. He’s sometimes deliberately provocative about these things, that’s all. Saying he hates musicals. But I think deep down he cares much more about his work that he would ever say.
'We’ve written a few songs together since Evita and we almost have an album’s worth. And always with Tim there will be a couple of lines in a song that no other lyricist could have come up with. There’s one we’ve worked on called Dance the Dance and it has the line: “She was on the ball and he was so last season”. Wonderful.’
Lloyd Webber had even been hoping that Sir Tim would come on board to write the lyrics for Love Never Dies. He was quoted as saying: ‘I have implied it and he knows perfectly well to phone me.’
Clearly there is still a strong bond between them, so what went wrong? ‘Where Tim and I really had a parting of the ways was over Chess. I think I put it the wrong way to Tim when I said I thought the plot wasn’t theatrical. I said what it needs is a theatre craftsman to give it some John le Carré-type suspense. And for once we got out of step and then next I heard he was doing it with [Abba’s] Benny and Bjorn.’
It sounds like his feelings were hurt. ‘I was a bit hurt, yes, because I felt I could have done something with it. As it turned out, the songs from Chess are right up there with some of the very best ever written for musical theatre. If you audition in New York you will always hear four songs from Chess. But still, for me, there was a fundamental problem with the script. It never worked in the theatre, for me.’
Having been such a successful double act was he nervous about going it alone? ‘Well I had an immediate disaster without Tim, which was when I did Jeeves with Alan Ayckbourn. But then I did a big hit album on my own with Variations and that was a turning point.’
For his part, Sir Tim went on to have a huge hit with The Lion King, made by Lloyd Webber’s only real rival in music theatre, Disney. Ouch.
It occurs to me that, in some way, Sir Tim, who supposedly finds musicals a bit embarrassing, might have been something of a father figure to Lloyd Webber.
I ask Lloyd Webber – who has been quoted as saying that he was never that close to his father – whether he ever got a sense that his actual father considered musicals to be, well, not one of the higher art forms.
‘Not at all. I remember him bringing home a single by the Shadows and saying they are probably the finest quartet working in Britain at the moment. My father got every scholarship going and followed an academic side, but I know deep down inside that he would have preferred to go into film music. His make up was such that he wouldn’t have been able to cope with the problems that crop up constantly in the music theatre or film music world. Also, I think he would have thought he was letting the family down.’ Because? ‘My grandfather belittled it.’
For the record, one of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s rare forays into classical music was his Requiem in 1986. It is beautiful and haunting and deserved the Grammy it won. It was composed in memory of his father, William Lloyd Webber, without a hyphen.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-features/7244026/Andrew-Lloyd-Webber-interview.html
By Nigel Farndale
Published: 5:05PM GMT 17 Feb 2010
There are two Andrew Lloyd Webbers, separated by a hyphen. There is Lord Lloyd-Webber, the mogul who owns seven London theatres, collects vintage burgundy, Pre-Raphaelite paintings, and wives (well, three of them anyway). He is a Tory. A man of refined taste. Establishment to his bones.
And then there is Andrew Lloyd Webber without a hyphen. He was so precocious as a child he could compose almost before he could walk. He won a scholarship to Westminster School and an exhibition to read history at Magdalene College, Oxford, only to drop out after one term in order to pursue his dream of writing musicals.
This must have seemed like an act of rebellion bordering on patricide, given that his father was a professor of classical composition at the Royal College of Music. (And come to think of it, even Lloyd Webber’s Tory tendencies have a rebellious cast to them, given that his domineering mother, a piano teacher, was a socialist.)
Lloyd Webber without a hyphen seems to have been impulsive, driven, contrary and perhaps a little socially awkward and gauche, but a man with keen populist instincts and no qualms about pandering to the sort of middle-brow tastes that might have made his father shudder.
So there’s the paradox, then. Not only is he a nonconformist Establishment figure, he is also a slightly vulgar aesthete. And the two identities are separated by a hyphen that was added in 1997 to avoid confusion when he became Baron Lloyd-Webber of Sydmonton. As he might put it, Lloyd ain’t his first name.
In terms of his vocabulary, by the way, he does have a tendency to strain for the colloquial, perhaps in compensation for his received pronunciation – as well as saying ‘ain’t’, he will refer to a ‘beaker’ of wine, or his ‘PR honchos’, or his ‘grey matter’. Anyway, I think it is the Andrew Lloyd Webber without the hyphen that I meet in a rehearsal studio near Waterloo.
At 62, he looks trim and healthy. He is wearing jeans and a pale blue shirt. His hands are small, his grip light and, contrary to reputation, his eye contact steady. His manner is polite but impatient and distracted, and a habit to talk over the top of people gives him the air of a busy man, one who really shouldn’t have had that second cup of coffee.
Prior to this meeting I have spent a long morning at his office in Covent Garden listening, under armed guard it seemed, to a recording of the much-anticipated ‘continuation’ – not sequel – of The Phantom of the Opera. Called Love Never Dies, it takes up the phantom’s story 10 years on, when he has left his lair under the Paris Opera in order to haunt the fairgrounds of Coney Island, Brooklyn.
The musical, which begins previewing at the Adelphi Theatre next week, is to my ears more vaudevillian than operatic, with recurring background hints of a fairground barrel organ. But the overall mood seems similar to Phantom, a mixture of soaring ballads and tender love songs.
Predictably enough, ticket sales have been more than healthy. There are a lot of Phantom fans out there, you see. A lot. In terms of revenue, it is the most successful entertainment of all time, way ahead of the combined world tours of the Rolling Stones, even ahead of Star Wars, Titanic and , so far, Avatar. It has taken nearly £2 billion.
Lloyd Webber began planning what would become Love Never Dies back in 1997. Dozens of ideas were chewed over. At one point even Frederick Forsyth and Ben Elton were called in to give it a go, though not together.
The problem was not the music; Lloyd Webber writes quickly. ‘I often think of random melodies,’ he tells me. ‘And I pretty much hear in my head what I want to do with the orchestra as I’m writing on the piano. But the most important thing with musical theatre is the story. That is where you have to start. With the exception of Cats, which is an oddball, it is always the story that is the most important aspect and when they haven’t worked, as with Woman in White, it was because the story wasn’t right.’
His breakthrough came when he worked out the only place the Phantom could hide in 1907 without people staring at his face. ‘The answer was Coney Island, where freaks can walk around without being noticed. Freud gave the best quote about the place: ‘The only reason to go to the United States is to go to Coney Island.’ So this made the story about vaudeville instead of opera.
Like the original Phantom, Love Never Dies reflects Lloyd Webber’s highly romantic sensibility. ‘This one has taken romance as far as it will go,’ he says. ‘This felt like coming back to my own turf. When it was finally unlocked for me after 20 years of attempts I felt I was coming back to a character I knew well.
'If you looked at the logic of the original, the whole thing falls apart. I remember Hal Prince saying we have to start one scene before the last has ended and let the music overlap – and then just go for it. We don’t need to explain all this because the audience will get it. The story of the Phantom is one of rock masquerading as opera. The passions in Love Never Dies are rock passions.’
To what does Lloyd Webber attribute the enduring appeal of Phantom? ‘It’s to do with sexuality and, well, I remember 20 years ago going to a charity event Elton was giving in a restaurant and I found myself, to my great joy, sitting among five of the world’s most beautiful supermodels and they were all talking about Phantom because it had just opened.
'I think it was Elle Macpherson who said: “If you ask X she is worried about her nose and if you ask Y she is worried she isn’t tall enough and Z thinks she is too skinny. We are all of us insecure about our looks.” And I think that’s it. That is why people identify with the Phantom. Everyone has something about themselves they would like to change.’
To say there is anticipation for the new show is to understate. Is he nervous that Love Never Dies might not live up to expectation? ‘There is pressure. I can’t tell you whether Love Never Dies is of its time, because it ain’t Legally Blonde or Hairspray. All I can say is that I think the story is strong and the lyrics are the best I’ve had since Tim, if you take TS Eliot out of the equation.’
His musical Cats, it should be explained, the one that was a fixture in the West End for 21 years, was based on words by TS Eliot. And the Tim he refers to is Sir Tim Rice.
Rice was the reason the 17-year-old Lloyd Webber dropped out of Oxford. It was a life-changing encounter. Sir Tim was five years older, taller, longer haired, more urbane and socially confident. He also had an ability to write wry and catchy lyrics that electrified the young Andrew.
When these were combined with Lloyd Webber’s instantly memorable and charming melodies, a chemical combustion took place. The obvious comparison of a librettist meeting his perfect composer is when Gilbert met Sullivan, but a better one might be Bernie Taupin and Elton John.
Either way, Rice and Lloyd Webber clicked and within a few years they had produced three of the most successful musicals of all time: Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita. Then, at the height of their creative powers, they fell out.
As Lloyd Webber is the richest person in the British music industry, ahead even of Sir Paul McCartney, it is safe to assume he is not just doing Love Never Dies for the money. He can’t still be hungry can he? I mean, if he still needs the sense of affirmation that comes with success, after all these years of it, isn’t that a form of failure?
‘Why am I still hungry? I think it is just that I love the collaborative element. You depend on each other in a project like this. It is a shared adventure between the cast, director, designer, costume maker, lighting engineer, choreographer. One ingredient could be wrong and a great piece of work will disappear.’
The comment is a reminder that, for all his success, Lloyd Webber has known failure. In fact, he hasn’t had a new hit for a while, and by his standards Woman in White, The Beautiful Game and Whistle Down the Wind constitute flops.
Could it be that his recent brush with mortality, last autumn he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, has focused his mind? To paraphrase a certain mid-market tabloid, Love never dies – but he nearly did.
‘Yes and I did nearly die when I saw that headline because the point about my illness was that I didn’t nearly die, because we caught it in time. I kept having to get up to pee in the night and so I went to have a checkup and, luckily, they spotted it. Men over 50 should really have a prostate check regularly. It is the most common form of cancer in men and if you can get it before it angles off into other parts of the body, it’s not a problem.’
He had a prostatectomy in November and looks very healthy now. ‘Yes,’ he says with a grin. ‘I am. In the circumstances.’ He has an endearingly self-deprecating anecdote to share about the time he was told to leave The London Clinic by a side door via a row of huge dustbins, in order to avoid a gang of paparazzi that had assembled outside the hospital’s front door.
He assumed they were for him but next morning awoke to vast coverage of Amy Winehouse leaving the same place having had, allegedly, a breast enhancement.
He speaks about how he accepts the operation may leave you with an incontinence problem, but that this gets better every day. It can also leave you impotent, but not necessarily. As for the infertility, he is not worried about that because he has five children.
It must have given him intimations of mortality though. ‘Yes, it makes you think.’ What is it all for? That sort of thing? ‘No, more that it makes you realise who your real friends are. I was struck by the number of people who were my friends a long time ago who were the most supportive. Tim, for example. He rang my wife every day. And my first wife Sarah came to see me and she happened to arrive on the same day as Tim and they were getting on like a house on fire, catching up and talking about old times.’
He grins again. ‘There they were talking away by the bed and I might as well not have been there! And then the phone went and it was Sarah Brightman and I thought this is not great timing so I said: “This is a little awkward Sarah, can I call you back?” It made me laugh.’ Sarah Brightman was known as Sarah Two.
Was he surprised to find himself on his third marriage by the time he reached his mid forties? ‘Well I’ve been married 20 years this time, quite a stretch. I’m very pleased that I am still very close to both my ex wives. Both of them have stayed at my place in Majorca this past year. At different times.’
I have to say, I am impressed by the way he has remained friendly with his exes be they in business or marriage. ‘Yes, Tim is such a good friend and Sarah was wonderful when I was ill. She heard the roughs for Love Never Dies before it was mixed in LA last summer and I was quite worried about playing it to her because, in a way, it would mean more to her than to me.’
His marriage to Brightman lasted six years and was played out in the spotlight, including the acrimony of the divorce. Was it a passionate affair to begin with? ‘I think with her it was more about the music.’
He makes himself a coffee and is adept at operating the complicated looking machine. I’m surprised given that he probably has butlers to do that at home.
‘We don’t have butlers. Obviously we have people who look after the houses, but I try not to run things formally. I have good people around me. My PA, my driver, but my best investment is my black cab which means you can go anywhere.’
When he says his cancer made him think, was that partly about the meaning of material possessions?
‘I don’t think I am that materialistic, actually. Obviously at home in the country the art collection is important but we have one big room in the middle of the house where we do everything, the television, the kitchen, everything. I like cooking so I always like to have the kitchen in the central place. Music, architecture and pictures have always been my passions, and all that material wealth has meant for me, is being able to have some of the pictures I liked.’
I try and get a measure of what he was like as a schoolboy. Was he serious? ‘I was a bit. I was passionate about architecture and so was considered an oddball. I could have been academic but I got bored. I think I was quite popular at prep school because they thought I was weird playing the violin, and then one day I got up and did a parody of the masters, six tunes, and after that they thought I had a sense of humour.’
Were his parents pushy? ‘I think my mother would have preferred it if I was more interested in history, but I wanted to plough my own furrow. My parents were supportive about me leaving Oxford, even though the family didn’t have any money. We didn’t have anything to fall back on. We have that now with our 18 year-old, who I have a feeling isn’t going to go down the university route. He’s got all his grades, but he’s been doing work experience and enjoying that. I’ll support him if I think he’s going to the right place.’
When Lloyd Webber was that age, the right place meant being alongside Tim Rice. ‘Yes once I met Tim I realised how few really good lyricists there were. I was aware of a chemistry between us but also an awareness that there was no one else around who had the sort of individuality he had. The turn of phrase he had was so quirky and individual. I had met no one who had come even remotely close to him.’
He talks about Sir Tim a lot. You get the feeling it was, in some ways, his most painful divorce. Was part of the problem that Tim’s heart wasn’t in music theatre? That he finds it a little, well, embarrassing? Wasn’t he always more interested in rock and pop?
‘I think that is true, though goodness knows, he’s made enough records. He’s sometimes deliberately provocative about these things, that’s all. Saying he hates musicals. But I think deep down he cares much more about his work that he would ever say.
'We’ve written a few songs together since Evita and we almost have an album’s worth. And always with Tim there will be a couple of lines in a song that no other lyricist could have come up with. There’s one we’ve worked on called Dance the Dance and it has the line: “She was on the ball and he was so last season”. Wonderful.’
Lloyd Webber had even been hoping that Sir Tim would come on board to write the lyrics for Love Never Dies. He was quoted as saying: ‘I have implied it and he knows perfectly well to phone me.’
Clearly there is still a strong bond between them, so what went wrong? ‘Where Tim and I really had a parting of the ways was over Chess. I think I put it the wrong way to Tim when I said I thought the plot wasn’t theatrical. I said what it needs is a theatre craftsman to give it some John le Carré-type suspense. And for once we got out of step and then next I heard he was doing it with [Abba’s] Benny and Bjorn.’
It sounds like his feelings were hurt. ‘I was a bit hurt, yes, because I felt I could have done something with it. As it turned out, the songs from Chess are right up there with some of the very best ever written for musical theatre. If you audition in New York you will always hear four songs from Chess. But still, for me, there was a fundamental problem with the script. It never worked in the theatre, for me.’
Having been such a successful double act was he nervous about going it alone? ‘Well I had an immediate disaster without Tim, which was when I did Jeeves with Alan Ayckbourn. But then I did a big hit album on my own with Variations and that was a turning point.’
For his part, Sir Tim went on to have a huge hit with The Lion King, made by Lloyd Webber’s only real rival in music theatre, Disney. Ouch.
It occurs to me that, in some way, Sir Tim, who supposedly finds musicals a bit embarrassing, might have been something of a father figure to Lloyd Webber.
I ask Lloyd Webber – who has been quoted as saying that he was never that close to his father – whether he ever got a sense that his actual father considered musicals to be, well, not one of the higher art forms.
‘Not at all. I remember him bringing home a single by the Shadows and saying they are probably the finest quartet working in Britain at the moment. My father got every scholarship going and followed an academic side, but I know deep down inside that he would have preferred to go into film music. His make up was such that he wouldn’t have been able to cope with the problems that crop up constantly in the music theatre or film music world. Also, I think he would have thought he was letting the family down.’ Because? ‘My grandfather belittled it.’
For the record, one of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s rare forays into classical music was his Requiem in 1986. It is beautiful and haunting and deserved the Grammy it won. It was composed in memory of his father, William Lloyd Webber, without a hyphen.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-features/7244026/Andrew-Lloyd-Webber-interview.html
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Love Never Dies Musical Numbers
Just revealed on the official website
Musical Numbers
Act 1
Prologue
“Prologue”
Madame Giry, Fleck
Prologue
“The Coney Island Waltz”
The Orchestra
Prologue
“"That's The Place That You Ruined, You Fool!"”
Madame Giry, Fleck
Scene 1 - Outside Phantasia
“Heaven By The Sea”
Ensemble
Scene 1 - Outside Phantasia
“Only For Him/ Only For You”
Meg Giry, Madame Giry, Ensemble
Scene 2 - The Aerie
“The Aerie”
The Orchestra
Scene 2 - The Aerie
“'Til I Hear You Sing”
The Phantom
Scene 2 - The Aerie
“Giry Confronts The Phantom/ 'Til I Hear You Sing (Reprise)”
Meg Giry, Madame Giry, The Phantom
Scene 3 - Pier 69
“Christine Disembarks”
Raoul, Gustave, Ensemble
Scene 3 - Pier 69
“Arrival Of The Trio - "Are You Ready To Begin?"”
Fleck, Gangle, Squelch, Raoul, Gustave, Ensemble
Scene 4 - The Hotel
“"What A Dreadful Town!..."”
Christine Daaé, Raoul, Gustave
Scene 4 - The Hotel
“Look With Your Heart”
Christine Daaé, Gustave
Scene 4 - The Hotel
“Beneath A Moonless Sky”
Christine Daaé, The Phantom
Scene 4 - The Hotel
“Once Upon Another Time”
Christine Daaé, The Phantom
Scene 4 - The Hotel
“"Mother Please, I'm Scared!"”
Gustave, Christine Daaé, The Phantom
Scene 5 - Backstage
“Dear Old Friend”
Meg Giry, Madame Giry, Christine Daaé, Raoul, Gustave, Ensemble
Scene 6 - The Aerie
“Beautiful”
Gustave, Fleck, Gangle, Squelch, The Phantom
Scene 6 - The Aerie
“The Beauty Underneath”
The Phantom, Gustave
Scene 6 - The Aerie
“The Phantom Confronts Christine”
The Phantom, Christine Daaé, Madame Giry
Act 2
Entr'acte
“Entr'acte”
The Orchestra
Scene 1 - The Bar
“Why Does She Love Me?”
Raoul, Meg Giry, Ensemble
Scene 1 - The Bar
“Devil Take The Hindmost”
Raoul, The Phantom
Scene 2 - The Beach
“Heaven By The Sea (Reprise)”
Ensemble
Scene 2 - The Beach
“"Ladies... Gents!"/The Coney Island Waltz (Reprise)”
Fleck, Gangle, Squelch, Ensemble
Scene 3 - Onstage at Phantasma
“Bathing Beauty”
Meg Giry, Fleck, Gangle, Squelch, Ensemble
Scene 4 - Meg's Dressing Room
“"Mother, Did You Watch?"”
Meg Giry, Madame Giry
Scene 5 - Christine's Dressing Room
“Before The Performance”
Christine Daaé, Raoul, Gustave, The Phantom
Scene 6 - Backstage/ Onstage at Phantasma
“Devil Take The Hindmost (Quartet)”
Gustave, Raoul, The Phantom, Madame Giry, Meg Giry, Ensemble
Scene 6 - Backstage/ Onstage at Phantasma
“Love Never Dies”
Christine Daaé
Scenes 7 & 8 - Christine's Dressing Room/ The Streets of Coney Island
“"Ah Christine!"”
The Phantom, Christine Daaé , Raoul
Scenes 7 & 8 - Christine's Dressing Room/ The Streets of Coney Island
“"Gustave! Gustave!..."”
Christine Daaé, The Phantom, Madame Giry, Fleck, Squelch
Scene 9 - The Pier
“"Please Miss Giry, I Want To Go Back..."”
Meg Giry, Christine Daaé, The Phantom, Madame Giry, Gustave
Musical Numbers
Act 1
Prologue
“Prologue”
Madame Giry, Fleck
Prologue
“The Coney Island Waltz”
The Orchestra
Prologue
“"That's The Place That You Ruined, You Fool!"”
Madame Giry, Fleck
Scene 1 - Outside Phantasia
“Heaven By The Sea”
Ensemble
Scene 1 - Outside Phantasia
“Only For Him/ Only For You”
Meg Giry, Madame Giry, Ensemble
Scene 2 - The Aerie
“The Aerie”
The Orchestra
Scene 2 - The Aerie
“'Til I Hear You Sing”
The Phantom
Scene 2 - The Aerie
“Giry Confronts The Phantom/ 'Til I Hear You Sing (Reprise)”
Meg Giry, Madame Giry, The Phantom
Scene 3 - Pier 69
“Christine Disembarks”
Raoul, Gustave, Ensemble
Scene 3 - Pier 69
“Arrival Of The Trio - "Are You Ready To Begin?"”
Fleck, Gangle, Squelch, Raoul, Gustave, Ensemble
Scene 4 - The Hotel
“"What A Dreadful Town!..."”
Christine Daaé, Raoul, Gustave
Scene 4 - The Hotel
“Look With Your Heart”
Christine Daaé, Gustave
Scene 4 - The Hotel
“Beneath A Moonless Sky”
Christine Daaé, The Phantom
Scene 4 - The Hotel
“Once Upon Another Time”
Christine Daaé, The Phantom
Scene 4 - The Hotel
“"Mother Please, I'm Scared!"”
Gustave, Christine Daaé, The Phantom
Scene 5 - Backstage
“Dear Old Friend”
Meg Giry, Madame Giry, Christine Daaé, Raoul, Gustave, Ensemble
Scene 6 - The Aerie
“Beautiful”
Gustave, Fleck, Gangle, Squelch, The Phantom
Scene 6 - The Aerie
“The Beauty Underneath”
The Phantom, Gustave
Scene 6 - The Aerie
“The Phantom Confronts Christine”
The Phantom, Christine Daaé, Madame Giry
Act 2
Entr'acte
“Entr'acte”
The Orchestra
Scene 1 - The Bar
“Why Does She Love Me?”
Raoul, Meg Giry, Ensemble
Scene 1 - The Bar
“Devil Take The Hindmost”
Raoul, The Phantom
Scene 2 - The Beach
“Heaven By The Sea (Reprise)”
Ensemble
Scene 2 - The Beach
“"Ladies... Gents!"/The Coney Island Waltz (Reprise)”
Fleck, Gangle, Squelch, Ensemble
Scene 3 - Onstage at Phantasma
“Bathing Beauty”
Meg Giry, Fleck, Gangle, Squelch, Ensemble
Scene 4 - Meg's Dressing Room
“"Mother, Did You Watch?"”
Meg Giry, Madame Giry
Scene 5 - Christine's Dressing Room
“Before The Performance”
Christine Daaé, Raoul, Gustave, The Phantom
Scene 6 - Backstage/ Onstage at Phantasma
“Devil Take The Hindmost (Quartet)”
Gustave, Raoul, The Phantom, Madame Giry, Meg Giry, Ensemble
Scene 6 - Backstage/ Onstage at Phantasma
“Love Never Dies”
Christine Daaé
Scenes 7 & 8 - Christine's Dressing Room/ The Streets of Coney Island
“"Ah Christine!"”
The Phantom, Christine Daaé , Raoul
Scenes 7 & 8 - Christine's Dressing Room/ The Streets of Coney Island
“"Gustave! Gustave!..."”
Christine Daaé, The Phantom, Madame Giry, Fleck, Squelch
Scene 9 - The Pier
“"Please Miss Giry, I Want To Go Back..."”
Meg Giry, Christine Daaé, The Phantom, Madame Giry, Gustave
Love Never Dies - A Note From The Composer
A Note From The Composer
Love Never Dies has been in gestation, on and off, for twenty years. In roughly 1990 I had the idea of continuing the story of the Phantom and Christine and setting it in New York at the turn of the last century. I had a thrilling discussion over dinner with the late Maria Björnson, who created the brilliant design of the original Phantom, in a strange restaurant in the grounds of Chelsea Football Club. She was very excited about a New World location. We felt the key to the piece could be setting the story in New York and that this time the Phantom lived above his realm, perhaps in Manhattan’s first penthouse. But where in America could the Phantom have first gone to? Where could he have been unnoticed and yet been a part of the community?
I saw a documentary about Coney Island. Here was the Phantom’s new home among the freaks and the oddities who were such a part of Coney. I also had the thought that perhaps Christine came to America with her son and I thought I knew how to end the piece.
Before Maria died so tragically young I discussed my ideas with the novelist Frederick Forsyth who developed them and published his own version as a novella ‘The Phantom of Manhattan’. By then I had moved on to other projects. Although I sensed the seeds of a story for a show, I couldn’t make the plot work for me as a composer. But I couldn’t leave the story alone.
In 2006 I decided to look at it again and discussed it with several writers and directors. But again it was to no avail until I outlined the problems I had with the plot to my old friend and colleague Ben Elton.
It was he who found the way through the road block. He pointed out that my first thoughts for a new plot contained several new characters. Ben suggested that any continuation of the story must be about the protagonists of the original show. So the new characters were axed and Gustave, Christine’s son, is the only new principal character we meet. Come the autumn of 2007, Ben had shaped a story that I felt I could make work.
The process of creating the libretto of a musical like this is hugely about collaboration. Where does the lyricist take over from the book writer? When does the book writer’s job stop? How much do I, as composer, shape and drive the show? The answer is, of course, that all our tasks overlap. This libretto is the result of enormous collaboration between Ben, myself, lyricist Glenn Slater and our director Jack O’Brien.
When at last I had a story, I made a decision. It would be daft not to occasionally have a flavour of the original show. But only very occasionally. I decided that none of the main melodies of The Phantom of the Opera would appear in Love Never Dies . After all the story is set roughly ten years on and, with one short exception, I have stuck firmly to my rule.
However there is one of the new melodies whose history I should explain before someone else does. It is ‘Love Never Dies’ itself. This was the only tune I wrote at the time when I first thought of continuing the Phantom and Christine’s story.
It was recorded by Kiri Te Kanawa under the title ‘The Heart is Slow to Learn’. Even though I had given up on the new Phantom, some second sense told me not to release the Kiri Te Kanawa recording, although it did subsequently appear on a limited edition compilation.
But with the Phantom sequel definitely abandoned in my mind, I used the chorus of the melody in The Beautiful Game, the musical I wrote with Ben Elton. Frankly I felt it stuck out like a sore thumb from the rest of the score, and it was eventually cut and replaced by ‘The Boys in the Photograph’, now the title of the show when it is revived. However the dramatic situation in the story of Love Never Dies is exactly the same as the one that I had originally composed the melody for and I was always proud of the moment. Once I had the new plot, I restored it to what I hope is its rightful home.
Otherwise all of the main melodies were composed over the past two years for the story that Ben unlocked.
Andrew Lloyd Webber
Love Never Dies has been in gestation, on and off, for twenty years. In roughly 1990 I had the idea of continuing the story of the Phantom and Christine and setting it in New York at the turn of the last century. I had a thrilling discussion over dinner with the late Maria Björnson, who created the brilliant design of the original Phantom, in a strange restaurant in the grounds of Chelsea Football Club. She was very excited about a New World location. We felt the key to the piece could be setting the story in New York and that this time the Phantom lived above his realm, perhaps in Manhattan’s first penthouse. But where in America could the Phantom have first gone to? Where could he have been unnoticed and yet been a part of the community?
I saw a documentary about Coney Island. Here was the Phantom’s new home among the freaks and the oddities who were such a part of Coney. I also had the thought that perhaps Christine came to America with her son and I thought I knew how to end the piece.
Before Maria died so tragically young I discussed my ideas with the novelist Frederick Forsyth who developed them and published his own version as a novella ‘The Phantom of Manhattan’. By then I had moved on to other projects. Although I sensed the seeds of a story for a show, I couldn’t make the plot work for me as a composer. But I couldn’t leave the story alone.
In 2006 I decided to look at it again and discussed it with several writers and directors. But again it was to no avail until I outlined the problems I had with the plot to my old friend and colleague Ben Elton.
It was he who found the way through the road block. He pointed out that my first thoughts for a new plot contained several new characters. Ben suggested that any continuation of the story must be about the protagonists of the original show. So the new characters were axed and Gustave, Christine’s son, is the only new principal character we meet. Come the autumn of 2007, Ben had shaped a story that I felt I could make work.
The process of creating the libretto of a musical like this is hugely about collaboration. Where does the lyricist take over from the book writer? When does the book writer’s job stop? How much do I, as composer, shape and drive the show? The answer is, of course, that all our tasks overlap. This libretto is the result of enormous collaboration between Ben, myself, lyricist Glenn Slater and our director Jack O’Brien.
When at last I had a story, I made a decision. It would be daft not to occasionally have a flavour of the original show. But only very occasionally. I decided that none of the main melodies of The Phantom of the Opera would appear in Love Never Dies . After all the story is set roughly ten years on and, with one short exception, I have stuck firmly to my rule.
However there is one of the new melodies whose history I should explain before someone else does. It is ‘Love Never Dies’ itself. This was the only tune I wrote at the time when I first thought of continuing the Phantom and Christine’s story.
It was recorded by Kiri Te Kanawa under the title ‘The Heart is Slow to Learn’. Even though I had given up on the new Phantom, some second sense told me not to release the Kiri Te Kanawa recording, although it did subsequently appear on a limited edition compilation.
But with the Phantom sequel definitely abandoned in my mind, I used the chorus of the melody in The Beautiful Game, the musical I wrote with Ben Elton. Frankly I felt it stuck out like a sore thumb from the rest of the score, and it was eventually cut and replaced by ‘The Boys in the Photograph’, now the title of the show when it is revived. However the dramatic situation in the story of Love Never Dies is exactly the same as the one that I had originally composed the melody for and I was always proud of the moment. Once I had the new plot, I restored it to what I hope is its rightful home.
Otherwise all of the main melodies were composed over the past two years for the story that Ben unlocked.
Andrew Lloyd Webber
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
It has come to my attention...
That the last time Andrew Lloyd Webber worked on the Phantom of the Opera sequel, "The Heart Is Slow To Learn" was not the only song he composed for it. I remember at the time the press said he'd written a couple but I thought they might have been exaggerating as usual, or he was keeping them under wraps. I've since discovered another song was played at one of the Sydmonton Festivals, if not there then somewhere else, and it was called "Maze of Mirrors". I have no idea if any recordings exist and I have no idea who wrote the lyrics. Don Black wrote the lyrics for "The Heart Is Slow To Learn" so he may have worked on this one as well. I remember at the time reading the Frederick Forsyth novel "The Phantom of Manhattan" thinking the sequence with the mirror room would make an awesome stage set.
Just another obscure story I've picked up.
Ryan.
Just another obscure story I've picked up.
Ryan.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
They removed the clips before I could listen to them :(
AWWWWWWWWWWW BUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ryan.
Ryan.
Love Never Dies Amazon soundclips
30 second soundclips from the "Love Never Dies" CD are now available at the UK Amazon website. I haven't had a chance to listen to them yet but I will tonight. I came across this news rather abruptly. No one tells me anything. Here's a transcript of the clips from a Phantom of the Opera website. I've never seen such hatefilled responses since the release of "The Phantom Menace". Still curious tho...
***WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD***
QUOTE
1. "Phantasma. City of wonders. Mr. Y presents marvelous astonishments, human prodigies. The ooh la la girl."
2. Orchestral - Coney Island Waltz
3."Do you mean?"
"That's the world you destroyed with your greed!"
"It wasn't my fault - I couldn't have known."
"Don't you remember what happened back then? When we, even we, dared to walk among men? When even a Phantom could dream his dark dreams once again?"
4. "It's a little slice of heaven by the sea. The sights, the sounds, the lights, the spells. The wonderwheels, the carousels. The .... a modern holidays. The lights, the shows - the rush, the whirl, the sheer romance! And the rumors! Things so odd, you daren't..."
5. Meg: "I'll be waiting in the wings, wound up tighter than a spring, as the house begins to dim. And I'll practice every line, hoping desperately to shine, shining only for him. Just imagine how he'll cheer at the moment you appear, stepping out before the screen. Let them whoop and let them call, I won't hear the crowd at all. No, it's only for him."
6. Orchestral - The Ayrie
7. Phantom: "I find I can't give them a voice without you. My Christine, my Christine. Lost and gone, lost and gone."
8. Mme. Giry: Can't you see that the master's at work? Can't you see that his mind's somewhere else? Can't you see that obviously he's thinking of things more important than you?
Man: Careful, Madame. You're forgetting yourself.
Mme. Giry: Don't you see, he forgot what this is. Opening day, a big deal, what a fuss. Our success means nought I guess compared to the things that the master must do!
Man: That's quite enough!
9. French pastries, did you?
There's nothing over there we don't have bigger and better
over here, I assure you.
How was Europe?
Wait, there she is!
10. Where you'll be when it arrives.
This is outrageous!
Amazing!
I'm telling you, that Mr. Y's a genius.
it's a funhouse where the mirrors all reflect what's real. And reality's as twisted as the mirror's reveal. And the man is finding out what the mirrors show..."
11. Raoul: What a farce, what an outright slap in the face!
It's an utter disgrace. I've got a mind to pack and go, never you mind the debts we owe. God, I can't believe we've sung this low.
Gustave: Father, please come play with me!
Raoul: Please, tell the boy the answer's no! Must you make
that racket?
Christine: Why, it's the aria I'm to sing -
Raoul: It hurts my head.
12. Christine: "The heart understands. The heart never lies. Believe what it feels, and trust what it shows. Look with your heart, the heart always knows.Love is not always beautiful, love..."
13. Christine: I should have known.
14. Christine: "And must be done, and now we have no choice. We do what we must do, we love within we give what we can give. And take what little..."
15. Phantom: Tell me where you'd like to go, tell me what
you'd want to see. I can grant you any wish!"
Gustave: Could you how me if you please all the Island's
mysteries? All that's strange and wild and dark in the shadows of the park?
Phantom: You shall see it all tomorrow - I promise!
Christine: Back to sleep now, Gustave.
16. Mme. Giry: The beginning of the season.
Meg: Does he agree? It's been three months! He never comes to see the show.
Mme. Giry: You may get more than that. He has been composing again, late at night. Not this cheap, vaudville trash. Something glorious.
Meg: For me?
Mme. Giry: Continue to work hard - make yourself useful to
him!
17. Fleck: Hurry up and follow us - hurry if you care to. Soon the dark will swallow us - follow if you dare to.
Gustave: Is this where Mr. Y lives?
Fleck (or someone, who knows): This is where he works.
Fleck (or one of the others - I can't keep them straight!): Step lively, child. He is waiting.
18. Phantom: Have you ever yearned to go past the world you
think you know? Been enthralled to the call of the beauty
underneath? Have you let it draw you in past the place where dreams begin? Felt the full breathless pull of the beauty underneath. When the dark unfolds its wings, do you sense the strangest things? Things no one could..."
19. Phantom: ...want the truth right now, if so!
Christine: Once upon another time you went off and left me
alone. But that's not all you did - you left me with a son."
ACT TWO
1. Entr'acte
2. Orchestral
3. Phantom: We've been here before, but that was a long time ago, Vicomte. And we were playing a different game. Look at you, deep in debt, stinking drunk. Pitiful. Shall we two make a bet - devil take the hindmost?
Raoul: Look at you, foul as sin...
4. With your lady and your fella, and your kids and your
umbrella on a little slice of heaven by the sea. The service,
and the breeze, the food, the peace upon the...
5. "Your delectation. Marvelous automatons of his own
creation. Plus a finale to sweep you away - what a ... to
perform just one day! Come see the breathtaking Christine
Daae!"
6. Meg: I took a little trip to Coney Island to get away from all the city sprawl. I couldn't bear to...
7. Meg: Mother, what's wrong?
Mme. Giry: Meg, sweet fool, you did all that you could.
Charming, bright and yet still not enough.
Meg: What do you mean?
Mme. Giry: How you danced there, all entranced yes, all but
the one whose entrancement we sought!
Meg: He wasn't there?
Mme. Giry: Where, poor girl do you think that he was? Yes,
that's right, in with her all alone.
Meg: What, Christine?
Mme. Giry: Dreaming of their son, their love, too smitten to spare you a moment of thought. All that you gave him, it's all been a waste.
Meg: But you said -
8. Gustave: ...very beautiful. Like a queen in a book.
Christine: You too are beautiful, so very beautiful. Once this performance is through, we'll spend some time...
9. Gustave: ooooooh (waltz theme in background)
Phantom: Will she sing? Will she flee? What is she thinking
now? Is it him? Is it me? Devil take the hindmost.
Stage Crew: Ready on the floor?
10. Orchestral
11. Christine: every word, and it felt beautiful and I felt
beautiful.
Christine and the Phantom: Lost in the music once more,
feeling it rise up and soar, alive once again!
12. Man: The Vicomte de Chagny left here in a carriage. Saw it with my own eyes, sir. There was no one with him.
Phantom: Are you quite certain he left here alone?
Man: Sir, was there anyone else here backstage?
Phantom: Yes, yes. Mme. Giry, she was here with her vicious
little sneer. And that comment she made, the ungrateful...
13. Meg: ...everything away...
Gustave: I can't swim!
Meg: Don't worry, it's almost over. Sink into the deep, blue and cool and kind. Then drift off to sleep, let the past unwind.
END QUOTE
Yes, I'm a little worried at the moment...
Ryan.
***WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD***
QUOTE
1. "Phantasma. City of wonders. Mr. Y presents marvelous astonishments, human prodigies. The ooh la la girl."
2. Orchestral - Coney Island Waltz
3."Do you mean?"
"That's the world you destroyed with your greed!"
"It wasn't my fault - I couldn't have known."
"Don't you remember what happened back then? When we, even we, dared to walk among men? When even a Phantom could dream his dark dreams once again?"
4. "It's a little slice of heaven by the sea. The sights, the sounds, the lights, the spells. The wonderwheels, the carousels. The .... a modern holidays. The lights, the shows - the rush, the whirl, the sheer romance! And the rumors! Things so odd, you daren't..."
5. Meg: "I'll be waiting in the wings, wound up tighter than a spring, as the house begins to dim. And I'll practice every line, hoping desperately to shine, shining only for him. Just imagine how he'll cheer at the moment you appear, stepping out before the screen. Let them whoop and let them call, I won't hear the crowd at all. No, it's only for him."
6. Orchestral - The Ayrie
7. Phantom: "I find I can't give them a voice without you. My Christine, my Christine. Lost and gone, lost and gone."
8. Mme. Giry: Can't you see that the master's at work? Can't you see that his mind's somewhere else? Can't you see that obviously he's thinking of things more important than you?
Man: Careful, Madame. You're forgetting yourself.
Mme. Giry: Don't you see, he forgot what this is. Opening day, a big deal, what a fuss. Our success means nought I guess compared to the things that the master must do!
Man: That's quite enough!
9. French pastries, did you?
There's nothing over there we don't have bigger and better
over here, I assure you.
How was Europe?
Wait, there she is!
10. Where you'll be when it arrives.
This is outrageous!
Amazing!
I'm telling you, that Mr. Y's a genius.
it's a funhouse where the mirrors all reflect what's real. And reality's as twisted as the mirror's reveal. And the man is finding out what the mirrors show..."
11. Raoul: What a farce, what an outright slap in the face!
It's an utter disgrace. I've got a mind to pack and go, never you mind the debts we owe. God, I can't believe we've sung this low.
Gustave: Father, please come play with me!
Raoul: Please, tell the boy the answer's no! Must you make
that racket?
Christine: Why, it's the aria I'm to sing -
Raoul: It hurts my head.
12. Christine: "The heart understands. The heart never lies. Believe what it feels, and trust what it shows. Look with your heart, the heart always knows.Love is not always beautiful, love..."
13. Christine: I should have known.
14. Christine: "And must be done, and now we have no choice. We do what we must do, we love within we give what we can give. And take what little..."
15. Phantom: Tell me where you'd like to go, tell me what
you'd want to see. I can grant you any wish!"
Gustave: Could you how me if you please all the Island's
mysteries? All that's strange and wild and dark in the shadows of the park?
Phantom: You shall see it all tomorrow - I promise!
Christine: Back to sleep now, Gustave.
16. Mme. Giry: The beginning of the season.
Meg: Does he agree? It's been three months! He never comes to see the show.
Mme. Giry: You may get more than that. He has been composing again, late at night. Not this cheap, vaudville trash. Something glorious.
Meg: For me?
Mme. Giry: Continue to work hard - make yourself useful to
him!
17. Fleck: Hurry up and follow us - hurry if you care to. Soon the dark will swallow us - follow if you dare to.
Gustave: Is this where Mr. Y lives?
Fleck (or someone, who knows): This is where he works.
Fleck (or one of the others - I can't keep them straight!): Step lively, child. He is waiting.
18. Phantom: Have you ever yearned to go past the world you
think you know? Been enthralled to the call of the beauty
underneath? Have you let it draw you in past the place where dreams begin? Felt the full breathless pull of the beauty underneath. When the dark unfolds its wings, do you sense the strangest things? Things no one could..."
19. Phantom: ...want the truth right now, if so!
Christine: Once upon another time you went off and left me
alone. But that's not all you did - you left me with a son."
ACT TWO
1. Entr'acte
2. Orchestral
3. Phantom: We've been here before, but that was a long time ago, Vicomte. And we were playing a different game. Look at you, deep in debt, stinking drunk. Pitiful. Shall we two make a bet - devil take the hindmost?
Raoul: Look at you, foul as sin...
4. With your lady and your fella, and your kids and your
umbrella on a little slice of heaven by the sea. The service,
and the breeze, the food, the peace upon the...
5. "Your delectation. Marvelous automatons of his own
creation. Plus a finale to sweep you away - what a ... to
perform just one day! Come see the breathtaking Christine
Daae!"
6. Meg: I took a little trip to Coney Island to get away from all the city sprawl. I couldn't bear to...
7. Meg: Mother, what's wrong?
Mme. Giry: Meg, sweet fool, you did all that you could.
Charming, bright and yet still not enough.
Meg: What do you mean?
Mme. Giry: How you danced there, all entranced yes, all but
the one whose entrancement we sought!
Meg: He wasn't there?
Mme. Giry: Where, poor girl do you think that he was? Yes,
that's right, in with her all alone.
Meg: What, Christine?
Mme. Giry: Dreaming of their son, their love, too smitten to spare you a moment of thought. All that you gave him, it's all been a waste.
Meg: But you said -
8. Gustave: ...very beautiful. Like a queen in a book.
Christine: You too are beautiful, so very beautiful. Once this performance is through, we'll spend some time...
9. Gustave: ooooooh (waltz theme in background)
Phantom: Will she sing? Will she flee? What is she thinking
now? Is it him? Is it me? Devil take the hindmost.
Stage Crew: Ready on the floor?
10. Orchestral
11. Christine: every word, and it felt beautiful and I felt
beautiful.
Christine and the Phantom: Lost in the music once more,
feeling it rise up and soar, alive once again!
12. Man: The Vicomte de Chagny left here in a carriage. Saw it with my own eyes, sir. There was no one with him.
Phantom: Are you quite certain he left here alone?
Man: Sir, was there anyone else here backstage?
Phantom: Yes, yes. Mme. Giry, she was here with her vicious
little sneer. And that comment she made, the ungrateful...
13. Meg: ...everything away...
Gustave: I can't swim!
Meg: Don't worry, it's almost over. Sink into the deep, blue and cool and kind. Then drift off to sleep, let the past unwind.
END QUOTE
Yes, I'm a little worried at the moment...
Ryan.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
More Coney Island fires, they appear to have been common
This is from a WordPress entry dated 30 September 2006. The full link is included below. I found these bits most interesting...
QUOTE
Fires seemed to be a common occurence in these parks. The buildings and rides were all built using very flammable materials: frames of thin strips of wood covered with a moldable mixture of plaster of Paris. That, coupled with the number of electric lights used in the parks – when lightbulbs were still a novelty, created the perfect situation for FIRE.
END QUOTE
SECOND QUOTE
SO Dreamland here was the crazy one. It was only around from 1904 til 1911, but it went all out in that short time, trying to compete with Luna Park next door. It billed itself “High-Class Entertainment” and even through in some educational exhibits. Apparently it had over one million light bulbs illuminating the park and its buildings (REMEMBER THIS: 1 million)
Among Dreamland’s attractions were a railway that ran through a Swiss alpine landscape; imitation Venetian canals with gondolas; a “Lilliputian Village” with three hundred dwarf inhabitants; and a demonstration of fire-fighting in which two thousand people pretended to put out a blazing six-story building. Creepiest of all, there was a display of baby incubators, where premature babies were cared for and exhibited. Yup, preemies on display.
Now, on the night before opening for the 1911 season, a new ride called Hell Gate was undergoing last minute repairs. On the ride, boats rushed through dim caverns – very scary. Anyways, a leak had to be plugged with tar, and at 1:30 in the morning that night, the electric lights illuminating the workers started to explode and in the darkness one of the workers knocked over a bucket of hot pitch. And Hell Gate was on FIRE.
The flames quickly spread through the entire park. A brand new high-pressure water pumping station failed, and there wasn’t enough water to keep the fire under control.
It was complete chaos in the park. With only the light of the fire, everyone was trying to save the animals and preemies. The one-armed lion tamer, Captain Bonavita, was trying to save his cats when a few of the terrified lions escaped. One named Black Prince ran out into the streets, where crowds of people were watching the fire, and was shot by police. The New York Times reported that all the preemies were lost to the flames, then later learned that they had all survived. Preemies, lions and fire. How completely crazy is that?
The park was never rebuilt.
END SECOND QUOTE
http://alexbee.wordpress.com/2006/09/30/haunted-by-coney-island/
This further backs my theory that there may be a gigantic fire at the climax of "Love Never Dies". We'll know in a few weeks.
Ryan.
QUOTE
Fires seemed to be a common occurence in these parks. The buildings and rides were all built using very flammable materials: frames of thin strips of wood covered with a moldable mixture of plaster of Paris. That, coupled with the number of electric lights used in the parks – when lightbulbs were still a novelty, created the perfect situation for FIRE.
END QUOTE
SECOND QUOTE
SO Dreamland here was the crazy one. It was only around from 1904 til 1911, but it went all out in that short time, trying to compete with Luna Park next door. It billed itself “High-Class Entertainment” and even through in some educational exhibits. Apparently it had over one million light bulbs illuminating the park and its buildings (REMEMBER THIS: 1 million)
Among Dreamland’s attractions were a railway that ran through a Swiss alpine landscape; imitation Venetian canals with gondolas; a “Lilliputian Village” with three hundred dwarf inhabitants; and a demonstration of fire-fighting in which two thousand people pretended to put out a blazing six-story building. Creepiest of all, there was a display of baby incubators, where premature babies were cared for and exhibited. Yup, preemies on display.
Now, on the night before opening for the 1911 season, a new ride called Hell Gate was undergoing last minute repairs. On the ride, boats rushed through dim caverns – very scary. Anyways, a leak had to be plugged with tar, and at 1:30 in the morning that night, the electric lights illuminating the workers started to explode and in the darkness one of the workers knocked over a bucket of hot pitch. And Hell Gate was on FIRE.
The flames quickly spread through the entire park. A brand new high-pressure water pumping station failed, and there wasn’t enough water to keep the fire under control.
It was complete chaos in the park. With only the light of the fire, everyone was trying to save the animals and preemies. The one-armed lion tamer, Captain Bonavita, was trying to save his cats when a few of the terrified lions escaped. One named Black Prince ran out into the streets, where crowds of people were watching the fire, and was shot by police. The New York Times reported that all the preemies were lost to the flames, then later learned that they had all survived. Preemies, lions and fire. How completely crazy is that?
The park was never rebuilt.
END SECOND QUOTE
http://alexbee.wordpress.com/2006/09/30/haunted-by-coney-island/
This further backs my theory that there may be a gigantic fire at the climax of "Love Never Dies". We'll know in a few weeks.
Ryan.
A 1907 article on the Steeplechase Park, Coney Island fire
Bridgeport, CT Steeplechase Island Ballpark Fire, Aug 1907
Posted May 31st, 2009 by Linda Horton
FIRE AT TILYOU'S BRIDGEPORT PLACE
His Connecticut Steeplechase Is Destroyed as Was His Coney Island Property.
DYNAMITE TO STOP FLAMES.
With No Water Pressure, the Whole Island Is Threatened--The Loss Is $60,000.
Special to The New York Times.
BRIDGEPORT, Aug. 18--Some one dropped a lighted cigarette under the bleachers at George C. Tilyou's Steeplechase Island, where the Chicago National League baseball team and the Bridgeport team were warming up for an exhibition game this afternoon. Forty minutes later the bleachers, grand stand, the Steeplechase building, and the earthquake house had been destroyed by flames. The total loss is $60,000.
At the time the fire broke out the bleachers and grand stand were filled with 5,000 men, women, and children. A small boy was the first to see the flames and shouted that there was a bonfire under the bleachers. Some men looked at the incipient blaze and remarked, "Ah, let it burn."
It looked at that time as if a cup of water would have been sufficient to kill it, but the fire caught some waste paper and dry tinder, and then ignited the woodwork of the bleachers. There was a scrambled for safety, but in spite of it the very best order prevailed.
Men shouted that there was plenty of time and the great crowd acted with splendid judgment. There was no hurrying and everybody had left the grand stand when the flames attacked it.
Then the fire spread to the Steeplechase, and that structure was completely at the mercy of the flames twenty minutes later. There is no water supply on the island sufficient to fight a fire, and the wind was blowing the flames toward the main cluster of buildings in the centre of the island.
Manager Paul Boynton attempted to blow up the front of the Steeplechase building with dynamite to stop the progress of the flames. The attempt was a failure, but luckily there was a shift in the wind, and any further spreading of the fire was stopped.
The Fire Department was called out from this place, but was unable to get to the Island, there being no dock heavy enough to land any of the steamers. Hose companies were shipped over to the island, however, but there was no pressure to the water, and the buildings were allowed to smother themselves out.
Besides the two structures mentioned Robert Weber's cottage was destroyed, with all its contents. There was some damage to the bathing pavilion and to the booths of the east side of the Trail.
Mr. Tilyou has a very small insurance. Mr. Weber's loss is about $3,000.
After the fences, grand stand, and bleachers were destroyed the ball teams played five innings to satisfy those who had paid admissions. Every foul ball went over into the smoldering section and was consumed.
About 10,000 people clustered about the diamond to watch the game. It was a free exhibition except to those who had paid before the fire broke out. The Chicago team won by the score of 3 to 1.
______________
Three weeks ago yesterday Mr. Tilyou's Steeplechase Park, at Coney Island, was destroyed by fire, at an estimated loss of $1,000,000.
A representative of Mr. Tilyou said at Coney Island last night that Mr. Tilyou would certainly replace all of the structures destroyed at Bridgeport yesterday. There was some insurance on the Bridgeport property, Mr. Tilyou's representative said. How much he did not know.
The New York Times, New York, NY 19 Aug 1907
__________________
Transcribed by Linda Horton. Thank you, Linda!
http://www3.gendisasters.com/connecticut/12854/bridgeport-ct-steeplechase-island-ballpark-fire-aug-1907
Posted May 31st, 2009 by Linda Horton
FIRE AT TILYOU'S BRIDGEPORT PLACE
His Connecticut Steeplechase Is Destroyed as Was His Coney Island Property.
DYNAMITE TO STOP FLAMES.
With No Water Pressure, the Whole Island Is Threatened--The Loss Is $60,000.
Special to The New York Times.
BRIDGEPORT, Aug. 18--Some one dropped a lighted cigarette under the bleachers at George C. Tilyou's Steeplechase Island, where the Chicago National League baseball team and the Bridgeport team were warming up for an exhibition game this afternoon. Forty minutes later the bleachers, grand stand, the Steeplechase building, and the earthquake house had been destroyed by flames. The total loss is $60,000.
At the time the fire broke out the bleachers and grand stand were filled with 5,000 men, women, and children. A small boy was the first to see the flames and shouted that there was a bonfire under the bleachers. Some men looked at the incipient blaze and remarked, "Ah, let it burn."
It looked at that time as if a cup of water would have been sufficient to kill it, but the fire caught some waste paper and dry tinder, and then ignited the woodwork of the bleachers. There was a scrambled for safety, but in spite of it the very best order prevailed.
Men shouted that there was plenty of time and the great crowd acted with splendid judgment. There was no hurrying and everybody had left the grand stand when the flames attacked it.
Then the fire spread to the Steeplechase, and that structure was completely at the mercy of the flames twenty minutes later. There is no water supply on the island sufficient to fight a fire, and the wind was blowing the flames toward the main cluster of buildings in the centre of the island.
Manager Paul Boynton attempted to blow up the front of the Steeplechase building with dynamite to stop the progress of the flames. The attempt was a failure, but luckily there was a shift in the wind, and any further spreading of the fire was stopped.
The Fire Department was called out from this place, but was unable to get to the Island, there being no dock heavy enough to land any of the steamers. Hose companies were shipped over to the island, however, but there was no pressure to the water, and the buildings were allowed to smother themselves out.
Besides the two structures mentioned Robert Weber's cottage was destroyed, with all its contents. There was some damage to the bathing pavilion and to the booths of the east side of the Trail.
Mr. Tilyou has a very small insurance. Mr. Weber's loss is about $3,000.
After the fences, grand stand, and bleachers were destroyed the ball teams played five innings to satisfy those who had paid admissions. Every foul ball went over into the smoldering section and was consumed.
About 10,000 people clustered about the diamond to watch the game. It was a free exhibition except to those who had paid before the fire broke out. The Chicago team won by the score of 3 to 1.
______________
Three weeks ago yesterday Mr. Tilyou's Steeplechase Park, at Coney Island, was destroyed by fire, at an estimated loss of $1,000,000.
A representative of Mr. Tilyou said at Coney Island last night that Mr. Tilyou would certainly replace all of the structures destroyed at Bridgeport yesterday. There was some insurance on the Bridgeport property, Mr. Tilyou's representative said. How much he did not know.
The New York Times, New York, NY 19 Aug 1907
__________________
Transcribed by Linda Horton. Thank you, Linda!
http://www3.gendisasters.com/connecticut/12854/bridgeport-ct-steeplechase-island-ballpark-fire-aug-1907
Friday, February 5, 2010
What we know about Love Never Dies, the continuation of The Phantom of the Opera
The CD tracklist accidentally leaked through eBay where RUG have been selling copies (I purchased one of them promptly because I didn't have a credit card so I couldn't purchase one through the website):
Disc 1
1. Prologue
2. The Coney Island Waltz
3. That's The Place You Ruined, You Fool!
4. A Little Slice Of Heaven
5. Only For Him/Only For You
6. The Ayrie
7. 'Till I Hear You Sing
8. Giry Confronts The Phantom/'Till I Hear You Sing (Reprise)
9. Christine Disembarks
10. Arrival Of The Trio/Are You Ready To Begin?
11. What A Dreadful Town!...
12. Look With Your Heart
13. Beneath A Moonless Sky
14. Once Upon Another Time
15. "Mother Please, I’m Scared!"
16. Dear Old Friend
17. Beautiful
18. The Beauty Underneath
19. The Phantom Confronts Christine
Disc 2
1. Entr'acte
2. Why Does She Love Me?
3. Devil Take The Hindmost
4. A Little Slice Of Heaven (Reprise)
5. Ladies… Gents!/The Coney Island Waltz (Reprise)
6. Bathing Beauty
7. "Mother, Did You Watch?"
8. Before The Performance
9. Devil Take The Hindmost (Quartet)
10. Love Never Dies
11. "Ah, Christine!..."
12. "Gustave! Gustave!..."
13. "Please, Miss Giry, I Want To Go Back…"
The first song revealed at the launch sung by Ramin Karimloo who will be playing the Phantom. He was accompanied by the full orchestra. "Coney Island Waltz" was released through the website shortly beforehand:
‘TILL I HEAR YOU SING – Phantom
The day starts
The day ends
Time crawls by
Night steals in
Pacing the floor
The moments creep
Yet I can’t bear to sleep
Till I hear you sing
And weeks pass
And months pass
Seasons fly
Still you don’t
Walk through the door
And in a haze
I count the silent days
Till I hear you sing
Once more
And sometimes
At night time
I dream that you are there
But wake
Holding nothing but the
Empty air
And years come
And years go
Time runs dry
Still I ache
Down to the core
My broken soul
Can’t be alive and whole
Till I hear you sing
Once more
And music
Your music
It teases at my ear
I turn
And it fades away
And you’re not here
Let hopes pass
Let dreams pass
Let them die
Without you
What are they for?
I’ll always feel
No more than half way real
Till I hear you sing
Once more
The second song revealed at the last South Bank Awards sung by Sierra Boggess who will be playing Christine. She was accompanied by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Louise Hunt on pianos.
LOVE NEVER DIES – Christine
Who knows when love begins
Who knows what makes it start
One day it’s simply there
Alive inside your heart
It slips into your thoughts
It infiltrates your soul
It takes you by surprise
Then seizes full control
Try to deny it
And try to protest
But love won’t let you go
Once you’ve been possessed
Love never dies
Love never falters
Once it has spoken
Love is yours
Love never fades
Love never alters
Hearts may get broken
Love endures
Hearts may get broken
Love endures
And soon as you submit
Surrender flesh and bone
That love takes on a life
Much bigger than your own
It uses you at whim
And drives you to despair
And forces you to feel
More joy than you can bear
Love gives you pleasure
And love brings you pain
And yet when both are gone
Love will still remain
Love never dies
Love never falters
Once it has spoken
Love is yours
Love never fades
Love never alters
Hearts may get broken
Love endures
Hearts may get broken...
Love never dies
Love will continue
Love keeps on beating
When you’re gone
Love never dies
Once it is in you
Life merely fleeting
Love lives on
Life merely fleeting
Love lives on
The tune for this song was recycled from "The Heart Is Slow To Learn", a number written for an earlier attempt at a sequel in the late 90s. When that was abandoned, Andrew recycled the tune for the chorus for "Our Kind Of Love" in his 2000 musical "The Beautiful Game" with Ben Elton. That was, in turn, removed from the 2009 Canadian revisal "The Boys In The Photograph" and speculation began about whether or not the original "Heart..." song would return for the sequel. It has now returned with the new lyric by Glenn Slater. I'll post the lyrics for "Heart..." and "Our Kind Of Love" later on, for reference.
Ryan.
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