THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA PLAYS THEIR FINAL SHOW ON BROADWAY AFTER 35 YEARS
The Phantom of the Opera had finally played its final Broadway show after a record 35-year run. The curtain fell on Sunday April 16 for Andrew Lloyd Webber's acclaimed musical. At the time of its closure, The Phantom of the Opera was the longest-running Broadway musical, with 13,981 performances.
The Phantom of the Opera has haunted the Majestic Theater since January 26, 1988. It has since been viewed by over 20 million people and has grossed over $1.3 billion. The show originally opened in London's West End in 1986, and following its success, New York audiences were keen to be moved to the Great White Way.
Based on the 1910 Gaston Leroux novel, The Phantom of the Opera tells the story of a mysterious masked figure who roams the Paris Opera. A musical genius, the Genie falls in love with a young soprano named Christine Daae. Set against a fast-paced soundtrack composed by Webber, a bloody tale of jealousy and obsession unfolds.
"I think the enduring appeal is that it's so romantic and that audiences stumble upon it," said the late director Harold Prince of the show's 25th anniversary on Broadway. "He has his own world. And whatever problems they have on the street and in everyday life, they come here and it's like a little kid stumbling across a fairy tale or something. It's just a little dangerous. But the thing is, I think they escape reality for a few hours and go into a romantic world."
Unfortunately, his attractiveness wasn't enough to keep him afloat. The show has been heavily dependent on international tourism, which has yet to recover to pre-pandemic levels. In addition, inflation and the high cost of hosting the show, which amounted to about a million dollars a week, negatively impacted its longevity. Now the 125 people who had to direct the show, including the cast, musicians and crew, some of whom have been with the show for three decades, have to find work on other productions.
Despite the disappointment of seeing such a group end, each performers and enthusiasts grew to become the very last performances into a party of the Phantom's legacy. Actor Ben Crawford have been scheduled to seem because the identify individual for the very last overall performance however changed into sidelined remaining minute because of a bacterial infection.
Since the display ought to move on, it changed into actor Laird Mackintosh—who have been with the display for 6 years and lower back to the organisation to understudy the function in its very last months—who changed into the only to don the masks and the cape for the remaining time.
For the very last bows, the solid changed into joined with the aid of using the stagehands, who were given a genuinely-earned spherical of applause—some thing that does not appear in normal Broadway performances. After the very last curtain, Andrew Lloyd Webber said, “It’s simply amazing, really, what has happened.”