It didn't seem camp that first time round. All I Ask of You, another great song: "You're safe / no one can find you / your fears are far behind you." I once listened to it on a loop after waking alone in the night in a house in Johannesburg, hoping to block out the sound of potential intruders.Īnd – often overlooked this – it is funny, with a good sharp take on the opera snobs of Paris, which is presumably something close to Lloyd Webber's heart.
But those few songs are crackers: Music of the Night with its by turns wistful, keening quietness and massive shouty ending ("set you FREEEEEEEE!"). Lloyd Webber has a talent for making a couple of songs go a very long way and if you look at the playlist you may be surprised at how slight it is. Then the chandelier drops and we're away, on a gondolier ride through your wildest romantic fantasies. The opening scene at the auction – " Lot 665, ladies and gentlemen, a papier-mache music box in the shape of a barrel organ" – where the little mechanised monkey plays its tinkling tune can still raise hairs on the back of my neck. Photograph: John Lamparski/Ĭhildren perhaps understand the mechanisms of nostalgia better than anyone, given that a month for them passes like a year does for adults and Phantom plays on that sentiment shamelessly. This all seemed tremendously impressive at the time.Īctor John Caudia and composer Andrew Lloyd Weber at The Phantom's 9000th performance on Broadway in September 2009. He is the angel of music, but he looks like the devil. For example, the Phantom is flesh and blood and also "there, inside your mind". The characters are archetypes in a way that speaks to the timelessness of mythology. Phantom is quite posh, or at least, it struck me as such when I saw it in 1986 at the age of 10, when it opened in the West End with Michael Crawford in the lead. Of all the composer's hits, it is the one that strives most greedily for the status of a higher art form.
When he wrote Phantom, Lloyd Webber had been separated from his writing partner Tim Rice for 10 years – the last big musical they'd worked on together was Evita, in 1976 – and the lyrics are by Charles Hart. But if it catches you in the right mood, it can raise your spirits like only a juggernaut musical from the 80s can, which is to say, with all the subtlety of a plunging chandelier. It is, like all Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals (with the exception of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat), easy to mock and, once the tunes have entered your head, hard to expunge. The Phantom of the Opera is a perfect expression of the time it was written in – an era of dry ice, big ballads and high altitude hair.
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