Valentine's Day: One of Broadway's most famous romances, 'The Phantom of the Opera,' celebrates its 25th year

As Valentine's Day arrives, one of the theater's most famous love stories is celebrating its twenty-fifth birthday. 'Phantom' opened on Broadway a few weeks before Valentine's Day in 1988.

|
Seth Wenig/Reuters
Actor Michael Crawford originated the role of the Phantom in 'The Phantom of the Opera' in London and moved with the production to Broadway.

Over the past quarter of a century, 37 different actresses have played the female lead in "The Phantom of the Opera" on Broadway. All 37 have been dressed by one woman: Erna Dias.

"I have no favorites. You can't do that," says Dias, who has been a wardrobe attendant with the show at the Majestic Theater in New York since rehearsals began.

She oversees each actress' 16 nightly costume changes — one so short she has only 34 seconds to get it done — and has rearranged her vacations to ensure she's present for each new heroine making her debut as Christine Daae.

"To keep this fresh, when I come in, I try to think of every night as opening night," she says. "I've been in this business 36 years and I never thought this show was going to last this long. This is unbelievable."

The show is celebrating its record-setting silver anniversary and it has eye-popping numbers — grossing over $887 million, using 1,600 tons of dry ice and having its famous chandelier travel 4 million feet. But behind the numbers and behind the scenes, it is people like Dias who have kept "The Phantom of the Opera" going, one outfit at a time.

It's people like David Caddick, the Grammy-winning musical supervisor who also frequently conducts the show dressed in Edwardian tails. His hair has grown gray over the 25 years he's been with "Phantom."

"It keeps going because people want it to keep going," says Caddick, who leads the show's tours as well. "We have an audience that keeps coming back, and a new audience who have never seen it, and everyone's very grateful for that."

The musical opened on London's West End at the 1,200-seat Her Majesty's Theatre on Oct. 9, 1986, with Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman in the lead roles. It crossed the Atlantic and opened on Broadway on Jan. 26, 1988, and has clocked more than 10,400 performances, becoming the Great White Way's longest-running show ever.

"Every single show is a pioneer into the future. Every single one makes it that much further," says actor Richard Poole, who has played Joseph Buquet in the show for 14 1/2 years. "It's an incredible blessing to be in something like this because you don't go into this business for security."

Based on a novel by Gaston Leroux, "Phantom" tells the story of a deformed composer who haunts the Paris Opera House and falls madly in love with an innocent young soprano, Christine. Andrew Lloyd Webber's lavish songs include "Masquerade," ''Angel of Music," ''All I Ask of You," ''The Phantom of the Opera" and "The Music of the Night."

The musical has played to over 130 million people in 27 countries and has grossed over $5.6 billion worldwide — more than any film in history, including "Avatar," ''Titanic," ''Gone With the Wind" and "Star Wars."

In the New York production, Poole plays an unpleasant, drunken opera stagehand who is killed before intermission — "It's rough dying eight times a week," he cracks — but returns to play various other smaller roles the rest of the night. He's a classic team player.

"Even the short time that I've been here — comparatively — I see people come and go, but I see the standard — the benchmark — remain the same," he says. "That is attributed to the people who are really in it every single day, week, month, year, decade."

The show has endured through blackouts, 9/11, economic recessions and Superstorm Sandy, a flood in the theater due to plumbing problems and one Christine popping her Achilles tendon. It also survived Poole losing some teeth.

He explains that a few years back, he cracked five teeth on a piece of equipment but kept going that week with some temporary teeth. Then, one night onstage, he said the word "ghost" and two of his temporaries flew out of his mouth, landing several feet away at the foot of another actor.

"I'm realizing at that point that these teeth are worth a lot more than my dignity of picking them up," he says. "I thought, 'I'm a stagehand.' I reached down, picked them up and put them back in. Everyone was going, 'Ugh!' — which is perfect for the character."

What has fueled Dias, Caddick and Poole every night for all these years has been the sense of obligation they have to inspire another generation and pass along their passion.

"My philosophy about it is that every time that you go on the stage, you have to realize that there are some people who have never seen a theatrical production ever before. There are people who have spent half a year saving up money to come and see something," says Poole.

"The show has become a revival of itself because now the people who saw it when they were kids are bringing their kids. It's iconic. It's part of the fabric of New York."

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Valentine's Day: One of Broadway's most famous romances, 'The Phantom of the Opera,' celebrates its 25th year
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Arts/2013/0214/Valentine-s-Day-One-of-Broadway-s-most-famous-romances-The-Phantom-of-the-Opera-celebrates-its-25th-year
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe