The Opera Ghost

The Phantom of the Opera was Andrew Lloyd Webber's manifesto for what musical theater should be and, ultimately, what it would become: a shrine to the power of song.

- ANDREA LONG CHU

IN 1988, NEW YORK MAGAZINE ran a cover story about the arrival of a new Broadway show. Described as an "old-fashioned, romantic musical that assaults the senses," The Phantom of the Opera told the tale of a deformed composer-the masked Phantom-who falls tragically in love with a beautiful soprano. The actual composer, Andrew Lloyd Webber, had written it for his mistress-turned-wife, Sarah Brightman; their affair had been all over the tabloids back in London. Interviewed at the couple's $5.5 million duplex in Trump Tower, Lloyd Webber called the show his "favorite" to date, all due respect to Evita, and, in any case, it was hard to argue with a record-breaking $17 million in advance tickets. Phantom might have been a British musical based on a French novel, but the show's fin de siècle grandeur fit perfectly with the decadence of the Reagan years: opulent architecture, sexual nostalgia, rock-and-roll pyrotechnics. (Plans to release a flock of live pigeons had been scrapped before the London premiere.) Even the unforgiving Frank Rich, in an otherwise negative review for the New York Times, admitted, "It may be possible to have a terrible time at The Phantom of the Opera, but you'll have to work at it." ¶Now Phantom is finally closing. (To ensure brand continuity, Lloyd Webber's first new Broadway show in almost a decade, Bad Cinderella, has opened around the block-to savage reviews.) In its 35-year run, the longest in Broadway history, Phantom has grossed over $1.3 billion and exceeded 20 million viewers; two weeks ago, it brought in a record-setting $3 million from ticket holders eager to attend the wake. The official cause of death is the pandemic, but the fact is that having a terrible time at Phantom today takes no effort at all. The production is simply miserable, succumbing in its old age to anemic tempos and wretched acting; there is a shocking amount of dead air for a show in which the performers never stop singing. Emilie Kouatchou, marketed a